


Hellfire and Holy Water

by Blackscales



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: 6000 Years of Pining (Good Omens), 6000 Years of Slow Burn (Good Omens), Book and Show, But mostly the show, Canon Rewrite, Canon Universe, Denial of Feelings, Developing Relationship, Eventual Smut, How Do I Tag, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), Light Angst, Like if anything it will be at the end, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Tutoring the Antichrist, Wing Grooming, babysitting the antichrist
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-26 18:20:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 32,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21822871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blackscales/pseuds/Blackscales
Summary: Crowley, big bad demon that he is, knows that he's hopelessly obsessed with his only companion of 6,000 years but can't risk ruining their fragile friendship. Aziraphale, righteous and loyal servant of Heaven, doesn't know what he thinks of his demonic acquaintance but knows for a fact that he cannot risk losing sight of the Divine Plan.Their ineffable God seems to have other ideas.More or less following the plot of Good Omens (the t.v. show and the book, mostly the show) but focusing strictly on Crowley and Aziraphale's point of view, with some added twists and turns and a much heavier focus on them actually developing a relationship. A.K.A. the horrifically slow burn no one asked for I'm so sorry.Edited by pretty much everyone I know. special shout-out to my friend Madgecat for grammar, my ineffable wife DrRageQuit for accuracy because she stalks this fandom religiously, and Rebecca Lynn for everything in between.Also posted on Wattpad.com as "Hellfire and Holy Water (A Good Omens Fanfiction)" by InfernoFrost, so you can check it out there if you would prefer.Hoping to update weekly on Monday, but can't make any promises.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 23





	1. Chapter One

All there was, was darkness.

It was the suffocating, oppressive kind of darkness beyond that which merely the eye perceives. The shadows crept in, snuffing out every bit of light that threatened to bloom in this forsaken place. But, of course, such was the life of a demon. This darkness was as much a part of him as his wings now; and in fact even they had been affected by the shadows so that the once snow-white feathers became mottled with shades of grey, before long they had turning darker than the emptiest of nights.

But that was millennia ago. Now this shade that clung to Crowley was more like his oldest friend. Some nights it was his comfort, telling him that no matter what he at least had his identity as a demon to cling to, for whatever that was worth. Tonight it hung in the air about him, filling his car with its overbearing presence until he was convinced, not for the first time, that he wanted nothing more than to outrun it.

“Perhaps some music,” he mumbled to himself.

By his command the radio whirred to life and a song began to play almost instantly, but just as quickly he lost interest and his mind wandered off despite his best efforts. Music was usually such an excellent way to drown out the arguments of his inner psyche, but now the music only served as background noise to the turmoil.

The more he thought, the more Crowley was certain he should tell Aziraphale everything that had happened, though telling him everything would be quite the treachery to the plan that had been brewing since the dawn of mankind. He could hardly interfere with that. This day was a long time in coming, and of course he had to be loyal to the forces of hell now more than ever.

Then again, there wasn’t necessarily that much that _had_ happened, he reasoned. After all, his only role more or less was to deliver a basket…a task that took no time at all. That could hardly be a terrible thing to mention to someone in passing. Even if the basket did contain the end of humanity and Earth as he knew it, to be delivered and set in motion a series of events that would start the war to end all wars. Heaven probably already knew anyway. All he would be really doing is making sure Aziraphale was kept in the loop, if he didn’t know already.

The thoughts raced through his mind on repeat for a short time before he barked out, “Call Aziraphale.”

“Calling Aziraphale,” an automated voice said in response. A second later a dreadful sound came telling him the call had failed, followed by the voice saying, “Sorry, all lines to London are currently busy.”

Crowley groaned in annoyance, mostly at his own stupidity. Of course this just happened to be the day he so cleverly crashed every mobile carrier in the London area—the night the Antichrist was born--and he needed to warn Aziraphale before it was too late.

_Not warn_ , he mentally corrected himself. This whole idea would only work in his head under the presumption that he wasn’t doing anything to betray his side of the war.

“My side of the war,” Crowley grumbled quietly to himself with distaste.

The words left a bitter taste in his mouth. He might say the taste was like sulfur, but at least that was a taste that he had grown familiar with over time. He didn’t like hell, or other demons. Well, no demons did, really. Still, even after all this time he didn’t feel much allegiance toward the forces of darkness, now that the time had come to prove his loyalty. It was all fun and games meddling with human affairs and causing mischief, until some bloody brat has to pop up to ruin it all.

He was already starting to form a plan as the Bentley rolled up next to a telephone booth. If he were a religious man, he might be praying right then for the blonde bastard to agree with him. He probably would have prayed that Aziraphale was even in his book shop. But prayer was never really his thing, so hoping would have to do.

~

Aziraphale let out a contented sigh as he shrugged out of his suit jacket, hanging it up beside the phonograph that was already playing relaxing classical music. Truthfully, he was troubled by what Gabriel had told him, but as he settled back into his usual routine it was almost impossible that anything could be amiss in his own little corner of the universe. Well, he reasoned, Gabriel’s sources could, of course, be wrong.

As he stood there in his quiet little bookshop, wholly unchanged by troubling news of any sort, it was easy to believe that it was all a hallucination, or some other conjuring of his imagination. Even if it was true, though, he still had several years before anything happened. But a handful of years…it was such a short amount of time compared to what he had already enjoyed on Earth. And of course, he had to consider the war as well: Surely it was all worth it for the glorious moment when heaven would triumph over hell once and for all. That was even assuming that the time was upon him.

He had started to convince himself that nothing was wrong or out of the ordinary in any way; that all that mattered in the world was this peaceful life he had come to enjoy. He closed his eyes a moment and let his mind drift off. Soft music filled the space with its pleasant harmony, accentuated by the gentle rumble of cars along the street just outside his door. The smell of old books and the homely old wooden shop itself was more intoxicating than the richest of perfumes and comforted him more than anything else. It was the smell of humanity and their histories, making him recall memories of vibrant human culture from centuries long past. But this was the culmination of everything he had been working toward as an angel for all these millennia: His role in the Great Plan.

Just as he was starting to relax and fully digest Gabriel’s words, his tranquil daydream got rudely interrupted by the harsh cry of his telephone. His eyes snapped open and a smile crossed his face. This was just another bit of evidence that the world was still spinning round just as it had ever been. He moved swiftly to the phone and picked it up off the receiver.

“I’m afraid we’re quite definitely closed,” he said pleasantly into the phone.

“Aziraphale,” a cold, familiar voice began on the other end. “We need to talk.”

Icy tendrils of dread seized Aziraphale’s heart as he recognized his wily foe on the other end of the line. Or at least, he would have liked to believe that he could respond so negatively to that voice. He refused to acknowledge that his heart lightened the slightest bit at the all too familiar tone. No, this was the mouthpiece of the enemy, and he was determined to treat him as such.

“Yes…I assume this is about-”

“Armageddon, yes,” Crowley finished for him, the words spewing from his mouth like venom.

~

The sun was shining brightly over St. James’ Park, making the pond water sparkle dazzlingly in the noonday light. Ducks quacked, splashed, and flew about the park, while families and loners alike strode by and went about their lives, just as humanity had done for thousands of years. Funny how they never truly changed. For all the world it seemed as though nothing was different at all.

Crowley sat back against the bench, draping himself nonchalantly over the aged wooden frame. As he gazed out over the pond, he immediately lost himself in the pool of his own thoughts. He already had a plan working in his head for how he would convince Aziraphale to help him…he just had to hope that he knew the angel as well as he thought he did.

As if on cue, he caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye and recognized it as the snobbish angel he was looking for, striding toward him with a perfectly straight face. Surely he wasn’t entirely apathetic toward the prospect of Armageddon? Crowley shifted his head the slightest bit so that he could watch him approach, though with his sunglasses on he hoped that it would still look as though he was merely gazing out at the duck pond.

Under normal circumstances he might have felt a faint trace of joy at seeing the angel he had begrudgingly befriended over the centuries. Well, maybe it wasn’t entirely reluctance on his part per se, but that was a trivial technicality. In any case, the severity of their meeting turned any joy he might have felt upon seeing him into ash, and he felt a twinge of sadness when he realized that he may not get to have these casual get togethers—that he would never admit to enjoying—ever again.

Little did he know, Aziraphale was thinking similarly as he approached the bench and sat down lightly beside Crowley, who was still draped across the bench more like a blanket than an actual humanoid. There was a silence between them then, filled only with the unspoken purpose of this cursed meeting. Still, it was a comfortable silence that enveloped them. Crowley began to think that, maybe, it wouldn’t be the worst thing for them to just sit in silence until the world disintegrated around them.

And then the blonde shit beside him opened his stupid mouth.

“You’re sure it was the Antichrist?”

“I should know: I delivered the baby,” Crowley answered. Awkwardly he corrected, “Well not ‘delivered’, delivered…handed it over.” The thought occurred to him that he wasn’t sure how the baby was actually born…and he was entirely certain he was better off not knowing.

But Aziraphale was focused on other matters entirely as he said, “An American diplomat? Really? As if Armageddon were a cinematographic show you wish to sell in as many countries as possible.”

Crowley resisted the urge to smile humorously as he added, “Earth and all the kingdoms thereof.”

There was a short pause before Aziraphale added matter-of-factly, “We will win, of course.”

“You really believe that?” the demon asked.

“Obviously! Heaven will, finally…triumph over hell. It’s all going to be rather lovely,” Aziraphale assured with a smile.

It looked so fake somehow, the kind of fake smile that one would only recognize if one had been seeing those expressions for the past six thousand years. And that trace of doubt on the angel’s countenance was just enough to assure Crowley that he was doing the right thing. Or the wrong thing, rather.

Much like a cobra, Crowley’s words coiled up in preparation to strike as he sowed the first seeds of doubt: “Out of curiosity, how many first-class composers do your lot have in heaven? Because Mozart’s one of ours. Beethoven. Schubert. Uh, all of the Bachs…”

“They’ve already written their music,” Aziraphale pointed out stubbornly, though again there was the faintest hint of doubt in his voice that only Crowley could have picked up on.

“And you’ll never hear it again,” he continued with renewed determination. The snark in his tone was palpable as he added, “No more Albert Hall. No more Glyndebourne…just celestial harmonies.”

Aziraphale frowned slightly and began, “Well-”

“And that’s just the start of what you’ll lose if you win,” Crowley interrupted at once. The coiled cobra that was his temptation was now ready to strike with lightning speed and ferocity at the heart of its prey. “No more fascinating little restaurants where they know you. No more gravlax in dill sauce. No more…old bookshops.”

That was it. The finishing blow. It would be easy for anyone to tell how troubled Aziraphale looked now, even if he did quickly try to cover it up after his initial reaction. The seeds of doubt were now firmly planted in his mind. But Crowley didn’t give himself time to revel in the small victory. To keep up appearances, he lithely arose from his perch on the bench and sauntered away. With any luck and if he knew the angel half so well as he thought he did, Aziraphale’s curiosity would have been piqued and he would follow swiftly behind. He could only hope.

But Aziraphale was lost in thought as, despite his firm constitution, he found himself taking Crowley’s venomous words to heart. Heaven’s inevitable triumph over hell was something he had been working toward, _training_ for since the beginning of time itself. But as he thought about everything he would be giving up in the process…it was unsettling, to put it lightly. He didn’t have too much time to dwell on it though, as he realized with a start that Crowley was already ambling away down the path.

In a split second he was out of his seat and speeding along to catch up with him. Thank heavens that wily demon had such an easy stride--catching up with him proved to be a simple enough task. They walked in silence for a short time, only adding to Aziraphale’s discomfort as he eagerly awaited whatever infernal scheme would come out of Crowley’s treacherous mouth.

With some urgency, Crowley finally broke the silence, “We’ve only got 11 years, and then it’s all over. We have to work together.”

“No,” Aziraphale vehemently refused . He knew that the fiend would come up with some ghastly plot to lead him astray from the Great Plan.

“It’s the end of the world we’re talking about,” Crowley persisted. “It’s not some little temptation I’ve asked you to cover for while you’re up in Edinburgh for the festival; you can’t say no.”

“No,” Aziraphale said again, adamantly. He silently prayed that Crowley hadn’t noticed that he had answered too quickly, too certainly.

Curse the blonde bastard for saying exactly what he wasn’t supposed to. “We can do something; I have an idea.”

“No! I am not interested,” Aziraphale stated with finality. To emphasize his point, he pivoted on his heel and turned to walk away, effectively leaving the conversation once and for all.

“Well let’s have lunch, hmm?”

Aziraphale stopped dead in his tracks.

Crowley continued innocently, “I still owe you one from…” he let his sentence trail off, knowing the angel would undoubtedly finish it for him.

“Paris,” Aziraphale answered predictably, “1793.”

“Yes,” Crowley said, as if he had only just remembered their lunch from all those years ago. “The Reign of Terror. Was that one of ours or one of yours?”

“Can’t recall,” Aziraphale pondered aloud as he stepped up to Crowley’s car without a second thought. His face lit up as he added, “We had crepes.”

Crowley resisted the urge to smile as Aziraphale eagerly settled himself into the car without another word. He put the car in drive and just as he pressed on the accelerator, a spark of light from behind them caught his attention. He glanced back to see a traffic warden’s notebook burst into flames. The warden himself jumped nearly a foot into the air with surprise.

“Now I know I didn’t do that,” Crowley said confusedly. At least, he didn’t think it was him.

Aziraphale looked a bit sheepish as he said, “That was my doing.” At Crowley’s questioning glance he added, “Er, well, I could hardly allow him to give you a ticket. You should be more mindful of where you park.”

Crowley just rolled his eyes and drove quickly away. Soon the incident was well out of his mind and his thoughts returned to the plot at hand. As they sped off down the road, he couldn’t help but admire how fiendishly successful his plan had been so far.


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit on the short side but there will be many more chapters to come, don't you worry!  
> Thanks for reading. <3

Aziraphale closed his eyes as he sampled the last morsel of his food, reveling in the symphony of divine flavors that assaulted his palate. All too soon the flavor faded and he was brought back to reality, but still much too late to realize that Crowley had practically been staring at him, a pensive look on his face. He politely wiped away the last traces of food from his lips.

“That was scrumptious,” he said as he set his napkin aside. Finally he looked up at Crowley expectantly, suspecting nothing out of the ordinary as he asked, “So, what are you in the mood for now?”

“Alcohol,” Crowley responded at once with a mischievous smile. He slapped his spoon against the rim of a nearby glass, sending a piercing ring into the air before continuing, “Quite _extraordinary_ amounts of alcohol.”

Aziraphale smiled and nodded wordlessly in agreement. Crowley grinned triumphantly back.

Some time later they were walking down the street when Aziraphale thought to mention, “I have several very nice bottles of Châteauneuf-du-Pape in the back. I picked up a dozen cases in 1921, and there’s still some left for special occasions.”

Most bookshops in Soho had back rooms so it was nothing unusual for Aziraphale’s dingy old bookshop to be the same. Contrary to what most dingy Soho bookshop back rooms were probably like, however, Aziraphale’s was significantly more elegantly furnished to cater to special occasions. Truthfully, these special occasions with Crowley were the only ones he ever really cared about.

“Not very big on wine in Heaven, are they though?” Crowley spoke up, drawing him out of his thoughts. “Not going to get any more nice little Châteauneuf-du-Papes in Heaven, or single malt scotch, or little...little froufrou cocktails with umbrellas.”

Aziraphale stepped out into the road and Crowley waved a dismissive hand at an angry driver who watched them slowly cross.

“Crowley, I’ve told you, I’m not helping you. I’m not interested. This is purely social,” Aziraphale insisted stubbornly. They stepped up to the entrance of his bookshop and he added, “I am an angel. You are a demon. We’re hereditary enemies.”

Crowley just stared at him blankly, not believing him for a single second. At least, not believing that _he_ believed the words for a single second.

“Get thee behind me, foul fiend!” Aziraphale said boorishly. Then with a smile he pulled the door open and added sweetly, “After you.”

Crowley smirked as he led the way inside. The shop hadn’t changed at all since he was last there, he noted, though it would have been much more noteworthy if something had changed. He made his way comfortably to the back room with Aziraphale following close behind.

“Just a moment,” the angel said as he took the lead. After some rummaging he produced a few bottles of wine and some glasses to match. “Here they are. A fine, earthy wine, aged to perfection.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

Wine, or alcohol in general, was one of the many things that most angels and demons agreed was a waste of time and should be left to humans. Crowley and Aziraphale, as usual, were the primary exceptions to this rule. They had both spent the better part of six thousand years studying the evolution of human-made alcohol in various parts of the world and while it did tend to improve over the years, the outcome was always much the same. The thing about modern-day alcohol, and wine especially, was that it just happened to have a little more science about it that made it a good deal more fun to drink than early Egyptian vintages.

A few hours later, however, the two of them hardly cared what they were drinking anymore.

“So, what...what exactly is your point?” Aziraphale asked confusedly as he took a sip from his glass. He hardly tasted the wine as it passed between his lips. He had nearly forgotten his own question the moment he asked it.

“My point is-” Crowley was interrupted as a burp came unbidden out of his mouth, “my _point_ is...dolphins. That’s m’ point. Big brains! The size of... _damn_ big brains. Not t’ mention the whales. Brain city, whales. Whole damn _sea_ full a brains.”

“Kraken,” Aziraphale interjected, lost in thought. “Ooh, great, _big_ bugger. Supposed to rise up to the surface, right...right up, at the end. When the sea boils.”

“Well that’s m’ point!” Crowley exclaimed, remembering suddenly why he was there in the first place. “Whole sea bubbling? The dolphins, the whales, everything turning into bouillab–... bouill-bouillab…”

Aziraphale tried to help, “Bouillab…” after a second he figured it was harder to say than he had originally thought. He quickly lost interest and tried to refill his wine glass, with little success.

“Fish stew,” Crowley simplified. “Anyway, it’s not their fault. And that’s the same with gorillas. They say, like, “Whoop”, n’ they say a lot of... _sky’s_ gone red! There’s...stars crashin’ down n’ what are they puttin’ in bananas these days!?”

Aziraphale frowned. He rather liked all the animals of the Earth. “They’re all creatures, great and small,” he said mournfully as he hugged his glass to his chest and stared off into the distance.

Crowley got a devilish gleam in his eyes as he added, “And ya know what’s worse? When it’s all over, you’ve got to deal with _eternitaaaaaaaay_!”

“Eternity?” Aziraphale asked as he sat up a little straighter in his seat.

“Yeah,” Crowley said with a shrug as he continued with the plot he had been working toward all day. “It won’t be so bad at first. Although, no Stephen Sondheim first night’s in eternity, I’m afraid. _Although_ , I have heard rumours that your boss _really_ loves “The Sound of Music”. You fancy spending eternity watching that? You could literally climb every mountain over and over and over and over and over and over and over.”

“I don’t like it any more than you do, but I _told_ you I can’t diso—not do what I’m told,” Aziraphale explained sadly. “I’m an angel. I...oh, God, I can’t cope with this while I’m drunk. I’m going to sober up.”

“Yeah, me too,” Crowley agreed. He was content that he had done enough to at least get the angel interested in his plans.

They both winced at the uncomfortable sensation as the alcohol slowly drained out of their systems. It wasn’t painful, but it was certainly an unpleasant experience that left a gross taste in their mouths. Crowley stuck his tongue out and his lip curled in disgust at the weird feeling, though it was over soon enough.

“Even if I wanted to help, I couldn’t” Aziraphale was saying by the time the demon came to his senses. “I can’t interfere with the Divine Plan.”

Crowley had a comeback waiting in his back pocket. “What about diabolical plans? You can’t be certain that thwarting me isn’t part of the Divine Plan too.” He could tell he had the angel’s attention and persevered, “I mean, you’re supposed to thwart the wiles of the Evil One at every turn, aren’t you?”

“Well…”

“See a wile, ya thwart. Am I right?” Crowley said.

“I...broadly...actually, I encourage humans to do the actual-”

Crowley interrupted, “But the Antichrist has been born. But it’s the upbringing that’s important, the influences. The evil influences, that’s all going to be me. It’d be too bad if someone made sure that I failed.”

There was a long pause, then Aziraphale’s eyes lit up as he considered what Crowley had said. He answered, “If you put it that way...Heaven couldn’t actually object if I was thwarting you.”

“No,” Crowley said with a honeyed voice. “Be a real feather in your wing.”

Aziraphale looked at him for a long moment, those burning yellow eyes staring straight back expectantly. Crowley slightly teetered on his seat. Any other person might have looked into those demon eyes and, if they didn’t run screaming in the other direction, would have spat in his face right then and there for having the gall to ask such a vile thing.

But the angel hesitated. He saw something more in that expression that any other person would have certainly missed. There was a kind of desperation there, the slightest hint of melancholy...or maybe it was hopelessness in those amber irises. Whatever it was, Aziraphale was convinced that he couldn’t say no to this old friend...then again, maybe that was all part of the serpent’s wily acts.

For better or worse, the angel reached out a tentative hand and the demon grasped it in a firm handshake, his eyes lighting up with relief that he had finally said yes. Deep down he knew he would be able to talk him into it.

“We’d be like godfathers, sort of, overseeing his upbringing,” Crowley explained in a much more relaxed tone. “We do it right, he won’t be evil. Or good; he’ll just be normal.”

“It might work,” Aziraphale said with a look of wonder and hope in his eyes. “Godfathers...well I’ll be damned.”

Crowley gave him a mild, crooked smile as he chuckled, “It’s not that bad when you get used to it.”

Aziraphale gave him a stern look then, though he wasn’t truly mad.


	3. Chapter Three

Crowley had always been rather fascinated with Mary Poppins. She was a whimsical character who whisked children off to fantastic worlds of adventure with just a bit of a magical twist, but there was a bit of mischief about her as well. Well, Crowley may have personally had a hand in the creation of that side of her to begin with, but that was hardly the point. The demon was somewhat inspired by her character when he was deciding how he was going to assume his role as the Antichrist’s mentor in the ways of evil. He rather liked her better in the book, though he wasn’t much of a book person. If only they hadn’t made her so sweet and cute in the movie. 

His imitation of the classic nanny from every child’s greatest dreams was almost perfect, though, from the instantly recognizable black hat to the stylish flat-bottomed shoes, which were more true to the book. He may have actually looked a bit too much like the fictional icon than he probably should have. Whatever the case, it seemed this would be their only choice for a nanny, as mysteriously not a single other person was there to answer the advert the Dowlings had put in the paper.

It was a bright and sunny day as Nanny Ashtoreth strode along the way toward the looming wooden door at the front of the mansion. Gravel crackled and crunched under his shoes. His fingers tightened slightly around the handle of his umbrella as he stepped up to the door and promptly rang the bell. A short time after the bell let out a loud but not altogether unpleasant melody, the door opened to reveal an elegantly dressed butler.

“I understand you need a nanny,” Crowley said matter-of-factly.

The butler nodded and held the door open a bit wider as he mumbled, “Yes, of course, come in.” It wasn’t his place to say so, but the butler found something deeply unsettling about this character.

A remarkably short time later, there was a knock at the back door, answered by a young woman who had been tasked with finding a new gardener. The previous gardener, a kind old man who always seemed to have a passion for his work, had mysteriously quit for no given reason only a few short days ago.

The woman pulled open the door to reveal what looked to be a batty old man with crooked buck teeth and soft white mutton chops on his cheeks. He turned to face her and removed his brown cap as he gave her a warm smile in greeting, showing off a row of those goofy teeth. He looked a bit odd, she thought, but something about him made her think pleasantly of Santa Claus.

In a thick West Country accent the man said cheerily, “They do say as you might be lookin’ for a gardener.”

“Why yes, of course,” the woman answered with a warm smile of her own. “Come right in Mr…”

“Call me Brother Francis, ma’am,” the man told her pleasantly.

~

He didn’t look anything like he usually did, but Crowley easily recognized him all the same. Maybe it was because he didn’t see exactly the same as humans tend to, or perhaps it was more the innate feeling of something familiarly supernatural nearby that tipped him off instantly to who Brother Francis really was. Not that it really mattered, of course, since their jobs wouldn’t interfere with each other anyway, but at least now he knew where the young Warlock would be most vulnerable to the disgusting exposure that was the light.

And, of course, Crowley could “unwittingly” bring Warlock round to such exposure without his side suspecting his treachery. For now, though, the Antichrist was still but a small babe who slept most of the day, leaving the poor nanny with nothing to do most of the time. Still, Crowley was able to fill the child’s dreams with glorious nightmares and horrors as he slept. Even there he could sense some resistance though, as every dream he felt being corrupted by pleasant thoughts and happy little daydreams as the angel seemingly had the same idea.

Everything was going perfectly according to plan. None of the other workers suspected a thing about them, though there was talk of that peculiar Nanny Ashtoreth and Brother Francis was doing a remarkable job for the whole estate, despite the fact that not a single soul had seen him lift so much as a finger to do any real work. The garden, the house, and the child all seemed to be in perfect condition with the newcomers. Not that it really mattered, since the Dowlings themselves were hardly ever even seen on the property between one responsibility or another, or at least that’s how they seemed to think of it.

Things began to fall into a sort of rhythm for a while, where Aziraphale spent most of the days sitting out in the garden with all the little critters that most gardeners loathed, and Crowley spent a great deal of time simply being around the young boy and overseeing his growth. He made a point to venture out into the garden to make sure he “accidentally” got some exposure to the light as well.

About a month into the experience, on one such walk, Crowley happened across Aziraphale directly as the angel was sitting in the grass passing out birdseed to a small flock of pigeons. The birds were startled as the demon approached without any attempt at stealth. It was only when a tall shadow loomed over Aziraphale that he looked up and realized someone was standing there.

“Crowley,” he breathed with surprise. He lost all traces of his Brother Francis accent as he asked, “What brings you out here this morning?”

The demon glared at him through his shaded spectacles and glanced around to make sure there wasn’t anyone else nearby to overhear them. Once he was sure the coast was clear he said in his own usual voice, “Please, I’m trying to be discreet here. We can’t let anyone know you know that I know that you’re here.”

“Er, I know?” the angel said confusedly. After a moment he said, “Sorry. But what _does_ bring you out here now, if there’s such an exigent need for secrecy?”

Crowley made a dismissive hand gesture, as if it were obvious. “I only thought that we should talk about our progress so far.”

“Here?”

“No, not _here_!” Crowley told him in exasperation. This was stressful enough without him being a complete imbecile. “When you’re done here, tonight...we can go for dinner and drinks—on me.”

“Oh...well that sounds more reasonable,” Aziraphale said with a bright look on his face. “See you then?”

Crowley gave him a brisk nod and quickly strode away back to the mansion. It was just a casual social gathering like a hundred others they had had previously. A night to meet up for a time and discuss the all-important matter of the proper raising of the son of Satan. So why was he so nervous? Despite being a demon, he decided it was still a bit stressful to be juggling this supernatural atomic bomb, as it were.

Surely that’s why his heart did a somersault in his chest when the angel accepted his offer.

~

The sun was starting to go down by the time Crowley stepped away from the Dowling estate for the day. When he was sure that no one was around he willed his appearance to change, feeling the clothes shift and mold about him until he was fitted into his more comfortable attire. His black nanny hat disappeared, and his perfectly styled hair fell about his face in straight, soft waves. He breathed a sigh of relief as he fell out of his role as Nanny Ashtoreth and snaked his way toward his precious Bentley with his usual, more natural stride.

As he slid into the driver’s seat of his car he felt a surge of relief, the end to another long day of working to bring about the end of the world and hoping that his plans would be foiled by his righteous counterpart. As he replaced the small glasses Nanny Ashtoreth wore for a pair he dug out of his glove compartment, he began to wonder, _where was the angel now_? Crowley was sure he had seen him leaving the property not too long ago, and surely he would have remembered that he was supposed to be meeting with him tonight?

But what if he didn’t? What if he forgot and scampered off to his dingy old book store, leaving Crowley to waste his valuable time waiting for his miserable ass to turn up. He almost jumped out of his skin when the passenger side door popped open and a familiar shape entered.

It was none other than the bane of Crowley’s existence himself, dressed in his usual style and looking just as he always had for the last six thousand years. He had a cheery smile on his face as if nothing whatsoever was the matter.

“Took your bloody time,” Crowley grumbled as he started the car with a snap of his fingers.

Aziraphale frowned. “Sorry, I wanted to make sure I looked decent for-”

“You’re telling me you took the time to change clothes even though you can use magic?” Crowley interrupted moodily.

Aziraphale was mostly unfazed by the demon’s sharp retorts. “Well...if we’re playing the part of humans, it's better to keep up appearances, you know.”

Crowley rolled his eyes as he put the car in drive and sped off down the road. He wasn’t annoyed at Aziraphale at all, not really. The angel was just a quirky individual and it was something that he had trouble getting used to, even after all this time. Truthfully, him acting so damn human all the time just made him easier to talk to and be around, since most any other supernatural entity would use their abilities to make life easier. This one was a rare exception, doing painstaking tasks by hand.

Aziraphale, on the other hand, was troubled. He couldn’t tell what Crowley was thinking, and with his continuous mood of, well, moodiness, it was difficult to gauge how he was feeling sometimes. Or maybe that was just because Aziraphale didn’t consider himself gifted in reading others’ emotions. So he sat somewhat miserably in the passenger seat, wishing he hadn’t kept Crowley waiting.

He reluctantly decided to be brave and disturb this fragile silence of theirs. “Do you know what occurred to me just earlier this day?”

Crowley glanced over at him questioningly. There was no hint of deep-seated hatred remaining in his expression, so Aziraphale was moderately assured that it wasn’t anything too bad after all.

“It occurred to me that you must have a soft spot of some kind for humanity.”

“What are you on about?” Crowley asked defensively, though not unkindly, to the angel’s relief.

Aziraphale cleared his throat before explaining, “Well, you seem to know all too well the things that I most appreciate about life on Earth, but I only just thought today about _why_ you tried so desperately to get me to work with you. What could you possibly stand to lose in the event of Armageddon?”

“What could I stand to lose?” Crowley echoed with a frown. “Well, I don’t think that’s your business, now, is it?”

“Oh, come now,” Aziraphale persisted stubbornly. “What is it?”

Crowley shrugged and answered, “It’s sleep.”

“Sleep?”

“I know you don’t go around there much, but Hell doesn’t like the idea of ignoring your problems and pretending to be dead for hours at a time every single day. I’d be miserable not being able to get sleep,” Crowley insisted.

Aziraphale didn’t believe him for a second, but let the conversation end there. At the very least he was assured now that the demon wasn’t truly angry with him in any way. They continued for a time in silence until his thoughts started to drift elsewhere.

Crowley really did love sleep, and it definitely was something that he would thoroughly miss should Earth actually be destroyed in the near future. But, of course, Aziraphale knew more than he thought he knew, and Crowley had other reasons for hating the idea of all this going up in flames. Some of those reasons he still denied even to himself, but others entailed the simpler, albeit still embarrassing pleasures of human life.

Namely among those and rather high up on the list was consorting with the enemy, not that he would ever dare to say it aloud. Not that it was even consorting, per se. He certainly enjoyed spending time with the angel when he got a chance, but he never let himself admit it. At least not out loud, though his mind was a rushing torrent of unbridled emotions that he couldn’t seem to tame for the life of him.

Of course, he had other reasons to enjoy life on Earth. He just couldn’t think of them so clearly with Aziraphale around.


	4. Chapter Four

A short time later, Crowley put the car in park outside a relatively new restaurant he had heard Aziraphale mention once in passing before. As they pulled up he muttered, “I probably should have checked to see if you were all right with coming here. This all right?”

Aziraphale seemed to only just notice where they were, and a delighted twinkle in his eyes convinced Crowley more than any words would have. But he said anyway, “Why, of course! You know, I’ve been meaning to come here for weeks and never found the time to do so.”

“Oh, really?” the demon asked, as if he hadn’t been completely aware of this fact from the last time they’d had drinks together.

Almost from the moment they entered the building Aziraphale took on a new life, talking animatedly to Crowley about all manner of things as if they were lifelong friends who had to be caught up on each other’s lives all at once. The demon was more than content to listen to every word, simply enjoying hearing about the things the angel was passionate about, even if he didn’t personally relate to much of what he enjoyed. Occasionally he interjected with a small thought of his own, but for the most part he was happy to just listen to Aziraphale’s voice. It was only when their food came that Aziraphale seemed to sober up about his rambling.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” the angel said with a dismissive shake of his head. “I seem to have dominated the conversation. We’re supposed to be talking about Warlock’s progress, aren’t we?”

“Right,” Crowley said with some reluctance. He had rather started to enjoy watching Aziraphale’s eyes light up as he gushed over the things he loved. “Do you have anything to say about it?”

Aziraphale dabbed his face with a napkin politely before answering, “I had assumed you had more to say on the matter. That is why _you_ asked me here, I should think.”

“Of course,” the demon assured smoothly. “I just wanted to make sure you are comfortable... _interfering_ from your position.”

“How do you mean?”

Crowley sighed, “Are your heavenly influences working?”

“Er, yes,” Aziraphale said. “And the, uh, hellish ones?”

“Going well, I’d say. Hard to tell when he’s still so young, so it might make the most sense for us to meet again to discuss,” Crowley boldly suggested.

It was a relief when the angel agreed, “Yes, that does make some sense. Perhaps weekly, just to be sure we stay on top of the matter.”

“Of course,” Crowley agreed with a satisfied smile.

They ate in silence for a while after that, simply enjoying each other’s company as they ate for the most part. Aziraphale was soon lost in thought, so much so that he wasn’t entirely focused on his food like he would have wanted to be. He thoroughly enjoyed spending time with Crowley...and it wasn’t really all that bad, so long as he wasn’t doing anything inherently wrong. They were helping each other to stop the end of the world. If he enjoyed the meetings and interactions that came with that, well, that wouldn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.

If he had allowed himself to actually think more about how he felt and less about what heaven felt, he might have taken the time to truly admire many of Crowley’s respectable traits and redeeming qualities. But of course, such thoughts were dangerous in a number of ways. It was easy for him to just take their mutual understanding at face value and avoid assigning any unnecessarily complicated labels. Deep down, though, Aziraphale’s heart seemed to have a mind of its own and it was not too keen on the idea of rational, safe thinking.

For now, however, he was perfectly content with enjoying their time together, pretending for all the world that they were a couple of good human associates who were doing nothing wrong whatsoever by catching up after a long and trying work week.

Crowley was in a similarly messed-up situation regarding their friendship, though he wasn’t as prone to ignoring his feelings entirely. He hated them, sure, but he was well aware of how he felt about Aziraphale, and prepared to let these emotions consume him as they always did. He was content to spend their time together in any way at all, even if it was in that simple, easy silence.

“You rather like astronomy, yes?” Aziraphale asked unexpectedly.

Crowley tried not to seem too invested in the topic, though he felt the smallest twinge of nostalgia at the mention of it. “Uh, yeah, it’s all right.”

Aziraphale took that as encouragement enough to continue and said, “Well, I thought so. I recently acquired a collection of old astronomy books from as early as the sixteenth century. Naturally you were the first person I thought of when they came into my possession. I may be persuaded to let you borrow them for a time, if you like?”

“Do I look like I give a damn about some Renaissance astronomer finally figuring out that the Earth revolves around the Sun?” Crowley retorted derisively.

The barest hint of a smirk came to Azirapahle’s lips as he said, “I never mentioned it had anything to do with the heliocentric model of solar systems.”

“The heliocentric mod–shut up,” Crowley spluttered.

His spirits lifted a bit, though, at the angel’s easy smile in return. It was one of the many things that had first drawn Crowley in: despite the demon taunting and pestering and egging him on, Aziraphale never wanted to rise to the challenge. He was just such a genuinely kind person with him. He was never truly upset by anything Crowley said or did, or took it to heart, and most of all he never really insulted him back or intentionally put him down in any way. Aziraphale was a kind and generous angel as far as he could tell, nothing at all like most other angels. He was purely...Aziraphale.

“I’ll...give you a lift home, then?” Crowley asked when they had finished eating.

Aziraphale nodded. “If you would be so kind. Shall we? Oh, the bill.”

“I’ve got it,” Crowley said simply as he started leading the way out. With a snap of his fingers some money appeared on the table, complete with a generous tip.

“Oh,” Aziraphale said with a pleasant smile. “Well, thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” the demon said with a bit more force than he’d intended, not that the angel seemed to notice or care.

It seemed only moments later Crowley was pulling up next to that quirky old book shop, and felt a weird pain in his chest when he put the Bentley in park. He hesitated a moment, just a bit too nervous to come out with what he wanted to say. But why? There was nothing wrong, no hidden motive to what he wanted to ask, so why did his mouth freeze shut, why did his tongue feel so unwieldy in his mouth, until he gazed into empty space for too many long and uncomfortable seconds? The demonic part of him reasoned that it was _because_ there was no evil ulterior motive, and he was finally content with that answer.

Finally he uttered with more calmness than he felt, “So, same time next week? To talk about the boy?”

“Er, yes. Jolly good,” Aziraphale answered with a smile as he started to get out. “Oh! Wait just a moment.”

He darted away into the bookshop before Crowley had a chance to protest, which is definitely what he would have done if given the chance. He had important demonic deeds to do and there was no rest for the wicked and all that. Luckily the angel wasn’t gone for too long, and returned to the car with an armful of books ranging from ancient-looking to downright modern, and everything in between.

Crowley hoped no one noticed as he visibly perked up at the sight of the collection.

“Here are those books I mentioned,” Aziraphale said excitedly as he deposited the books onto the seat beside Crowley. “Truly fascinating, really, like a glimpse straight back into the good old days of human discovery. If only there were more manuscripts that survived from earlier times….”

Crowley groaned, “You are the only person in this whole world who can be so excited about a dusty old pile of books from five hundred years ago. They are going to rot in my car ‘til you take them back.”

Aziraphale gave him a stern look before saying, “You are going to enjoy them and they will be returned to me in tip-top condition.”

“Yeah, right,” Crowley sighed. “Good night, Angel.”

“Good night, Crowley,” Aziraphale answered, perhaps a bit too softly as he closed the door, careful not to slam it like he had done by accident once before. He was sure he still hadn’t heard the last of that one. When he came back to reality he looked up in time to see the rear bumper of the Bentley as it tore off down the road at an entirely impractical speed.

So good was his mental conditioning that he could easily imagine that the little pang in his heart at watching Crowley drive away was all in his head. With that, he turned on his heel and walked back into the bookshop without another thought on the matter.

~

Crowley had no interest whatsoever in astronomy, and least of all in _books_ about astronomy. That was precisely why he hated every moment that he laid awake in bed poring over the centuries-old tomes Aziraphale had lent to him. At least, that was the lie he told himself on repeat so often it sounded like a broken record echoing in his head. He wasn’t truly a big fan of books in general terms, but at the angel’s insistence he gave them an occasional try.

It was rather enjoyable, in truth, though he would never dare to utter such a repulsive sentence aloud. Demons weren’t exactly encouraged to appreciate the beauty of anything. And yet, there was something hauntingly nostalgic about the books that had hooked Crowley almost as soon as his eyes alighted on the first page. Humans first discovering how the universe truly worked, and downright gawking at it, made something deep within Crowley stir just the slightest bit. Not quite all the way stirring to life, but tossing and turning in its eternal rest perhaps.

It had been a lifetime and he barely even remembered what it was like all that time ago, but the faintest image came to mind of a much younger, more celestial than hellish being. The memory was of this being naively staring at the cosmos with unbridled amazement and awe, soft white wings unfurled and ready to whisk him off to any place in the galaxy at a simple thought, the whole of the universe merely a canvas eagerly awaiting the first brushstrokes of the masterpiece it was to become.

But that was so long ago that time itself had forgotten.

With mild disgust Crowley decided he had had more than enough bloody _reading_ for one night and moved to toss the ancient book unceremoniously across the room. But, well, it was borrowed after all. Instead he placed it gently on the nightstand beside his bed and sprawled out across his sheets, ready to be welcomed into the sweet embrace of sleep once again.


	5. Chapter Five

“Why, he’ll be wanting a tricycle soon,” Nanny Ashteroth cooed with an unpleasant smile on her face.

The young master Warlock was just about sixteen months old at this point and Crowley was pleased to see that he was already getting to be quite the troublemaker. The boy loved to toddle his way over to his father’s desk, having found the door to his study mysteriously unlocked, and when his nanny wasn’t looking would find tons of fun-looking official documents and tear them up into bits. Or there was one time on one of Nanny Ashtoreth’s days off that he found a pair of scissors and decided it would be delightfully entertaining to use on one of mommy’s favorite dresses.

And then there were times that he would wander outside into the garden, to a whole new world filled with life and light and excitement just waiting to be explored by a rambunctious little toddler who was sick of being cooped up inside. Then there would be Brother Francis. The gardener showed him how to throw out feed for the birds, or told him to be mindful of little slugs and snakes sunbathing on rocks throughout the yard, and one day they looked together at a nest full of adorable newly hatched birds buried in the brush, little hatchlings that chirped and squeaked for food. Francis also told him to be nice to insects, but they had always looked really icky and Warlock wanted nothing to do with them.

Then most every night Nanny Ashtoreth would tuck him into bed and sing sweet and soft lullabies about the wails of the damned, eternal agony, world domination, or violating virgins. Warlock wasn’t sure what all that meant exactly, but he didn’t think Brother Francis would have agreed with any of it.

Over this time Crowley and Aziraphale continued to have their weekly meetings in private. Dinner was a popular choice for them, but eventually they decided that they could only resort to it every once in a while if they wanted to avoid suspicion. Not that they were up to anything bad, of course, or good in Crowley’s case, but they agreed that it was better if their superiors didn’t catch on and think there was more to these meetings than there really was.

After they had run out of different restaurants in the area, they resorted to occasional alternatives. The park was an option, though they preferred more secluded meetings. They came up with similar concerns regarding bus and train stations. Art galleries and concerts were possible options at times. But they had found that sharing a drink in Aziraphale’s bookshop every now and again was private enough to talk about anything they liked, and they were both rather comfortable together in that setting. It was the perfect place to scheme and plan their plot to save the world. Though that sort of talk, in truth, dominated their conversations only a fraction of the time before segueing to another topic entirely.

This was the first time that they had agreed to meet on an official and regular basis in six thousand years, and they both found it an uncomfortably welcome change. Both of them even began to look forward to these meetings, possibly with a sense of urgency as they began to hope rather separately that they would be successful and the apocalypse would be averted. If it did happen, they were painfully aware that they would be fighting on opposite sides of a long and bloody war. Best not to think of it.

It was far more pleasant, they found, to celebrate their differences, not that they really had all that many differences in the grand scheme of things. Years passed in this rhythm. Warlock was nearly five years old already, and their officially unofficial dates had been consuming much more of their conscious–and unconscious–minds than was probably good for them of late.

Aziraphale refused to label their meetings in any way and further refused to acknowledge that he was “consorting with the enemy,'' as his superiors would have liked to put it. Crowley knew damn well what they were doing, and what’s worse was that he knew he liked it. It was just another thing to add to the pile of reasons to hate himself. Not that he was willing to put a stop to their meetings, of course.

It was on one early evening, several weeks before Warlock would turn five, that the two found themselves in the back room of the bookshop nursing glasses of wine. Crowley was draped over the sofa, swirling the wine in his glass and trying to gauge how much more he should have. He was just beginning to feel the effects, only slightly, and he hoped that this would promise to be a long night of drinking to come and talking about nothing noteworthy whatsoever. At least so far, he was becoming comfortably numb to many of the insecurities and doubts that plagued his mind so often.

He was vaguely aware of Aziraphale muttering something about his daily care routine and whatnot. Next he went on talking about his manicured hands and something about how miracling things wasn’t the proper way to get it done when taking care of oneself by hand was so much more satisfying. He didn’t sound drunk by any means, but just the slightest bit of an edge to his voice made it sound like he was getting all worked up and forgetting his head for a time, worrying over simple matters. Crowley found something about this Aziraphale oddly pleasant in these moments.

“And don’t get me started on wings!” Aziraphale spluttered in exasperation as Crowley took another sip of his own wine. “Dreadful design flaw: human bodies with wings. Birds don’t have any issue preening their wings! They can reach around easy as anything to take care of them, but what are we angels to do? I can hardly be expected to tie myself into knots trying to keep them tidy.”

Crowley made a face at him as he said, “Most angels don’t care. And what do you care? We don’t use our wings for anything on Earth anyway.”

“Er. No,” Aziraphale agreed reluctantly. “But I shouldn’t have to go around with unkempt feathers all the time. Even if no one _sees_ them...I would always know they’re there, all mangled feathers and untidy-”

“If I clean your stupid wings for you will you shut up about it?” Crowley snapped in irritation.

The angel seemed entirely unbothered by his tone, and visibly brightened at the suggestion. “Would you really?”

Crowley groaned, “Yes, of course, but who the heaven cares if they’re a little messy?”

“I do,” Aziraphale said with a stern little pout. “Now, if I can just find a damp cloth…”

The demon set his wine aside and hissed, “A damp cloth? Really?”

“You already said you would help,” Aziraphale determinedly replied before putting down his own glass and dashing out of the room. That angel could move surprisingly fast when he wanted to.

Truthfully Crowley didn’t mind it at all; he was happy to help his friend. He was especially happy to do so when he knew things like this mattered a lot to Aziraphale, and how he obsessed over his appearance. From his aforementioned manicured hands to the immaculate suits he had worn without fail for the last several centuries, he was passionate about always looking his best.

After a moment Aziraphale entered the room with a towel and a medium-sized bowl of water, which he set down on the table beside Crowley. He closed his eyes in focus, and the demon watched with mild interest as two majestic white wings unfurled from behind his back and stretched out across the room, lightly brushing some of the shelves as Aziraphale stretched them out. In truth, they looked absolutely fine to Crowley, but if the angel insisted, he was willing to help.

“Did you just let your wings poke two big, gaping holes in your favorite suit?” Crowley asked in shock.

Aziraphale frowned. “Er. No, I...just a little miracle. No trouble at all, I can make it look normal afterwards. You know I wouldn’t ruin a perfectly good suit like that, and I could hardly just undress here, now, could I?”

Something short-circuited in Crowley’s brain, though he couldn’t tell why. “Er. Right.”

The angel didn’t seem to notice his reaction but focused more on himself. He turned his back to Crowley and gave his wings a gentle, tentative shake, careful not to knock anything over in the narrow confines of the shop. Crowley soon got over himself and watched as the snow-colored feathers rippled softly in the dingy bookshop lighting. A part of him got to thinking that it was a shame for them to be revealed in such dim and inelegant lighting in some musty old shop. He shook the thought from his mind.

“You see?” Aziraphale said wretchedly. “I have the most problems right at the base, by my shoulder blades. I can only imagine how _dreadful_ they look.”

Crowley wanted to assure him that they looked magnificent, but instead barked, “Oh, shut it.” He hoped the angel wouldn’t notice that the sound came out a little more choked than he had intended.

Without another word he grabbed the towel and got it wet in the bowl on the table, then wrung it until it was barely damp and started on brushing over the angel’s wings. He could see now that there were two holes in Aziraphale’s clothes that looked as if they had been made that way, allowing the wings to pass harmlessly through the fabric. The high and mighty idiot was willing to perform little miracles like that when it suited him, it would seem.

Crowley brushed the towel over the base of his wings, careful to avoid getting the precious coat wet or he probably wouldn’t hear the end of it. Bit by bit he washed the soft feathers, adjusted them if they were crooked, or plucked some that were old or looked like they were ready to come out. There really wasn’t that much to do, but he agonized over every feather like he knew Aziraphale would have wanted, even if he probably wouldn’t expect Crowley to give him that much care. Well, care wasn’t a good word, he thought with disgust. Attention.

Whatever it was, Crowley continued meticulously cleaning Aziraphale’s wings and revelling in the feeling of his bare hand brushing at the beautiful strands one by one, or occasionally along the length of the light, soft wing. This was one of the few traces of Aziraphale in this world that was explicitly angelic, and yet still entirely his own. They were glorious, and stunning.

He dare not let his hands hover in one place too long for fear of how Aziraphale might react, but he certainly enjoyed every moment, whether he realized it or not. Over time he moved further down the wings to places where the angel could obviously reach himself, but he was relieved to see that Azirapahle didn’t seem to mind. Before long they shone brilliantly in even the gloomy atmosphere of the bookshop, and Crowley set the towel down on the table beside the bowl of water and a pile of white feathers that had either fallen out or been plucked by Crowley’s meticulous hands.

“All finished,” he said as he stuffed his hands in his pockets, trying all too hard to appear apathetic.

Aziraphale gave his wings a look over with a warm smile on his face, then turned to the demon and said with gratitude, “Thank you, Crowley.”

It almost looked as though he, too, was trying to appear disinterested, but for the life of him he couldn’t hide that pleased look on his face. And Crowley was sure that he could see a great deal of joy in those soft blue eyes of his. The angel turned to admire them a moment longer then folded them neatly behind his back, not bothering to put them away for now.

“What’s that?” Aziraphale asked.

While he wasn’t looking Crowley had grabbed one of the feathers from the table and tucked it behind his ear. “New fashion statement. You don’t like it?”

“White isn’t your colour,” Aziraphale said with a hint of mirth in his voice.

The demon’s lips twitched into a little smile, then asked, “So why _exactly_ do you care about your wings so much? Aren’t angels supposed to be selfless and avoid vanity and whatnot?”

“You’re _hardly_ one to talk about our respective roles,” Aziraphale said defensively. “Aren’t demons _supposed_ to be vain? When is the last time you took care of your wings?”

“When was The Black Death again?”

“You haven’t taken care of your wings in over 600 years!?”

Crowley’s face twisted in a mild look of chagrin at the thought of what his celestial friend must be thinking about that. He bobbed his head awkwardly and said, “Sounds like...about the right time, I would say.”

“What would encourage you to neglect such a thing for six centuries!?” Aziraphale demanded disapprovingly.

Crowley shrugged, “You said yourself there are some hard-to-reach spots...and we don’t use our wings for anything, anyway. Just doesn’t seem worth the hassle.”

“Show me.”

“Why?”

“Show me your wings, Crowley,” Aziraphale said sternly. “You helped me; now let me do the same for you.”

Crowley made a face at him but obliged, letting the image of wings unfurling in his mind become a reality. It felt rather good, actually, to feel his wings stretch out from his back to nearly their full length, hindered only by the confines of the shop. He wasn’t really self-conscious, but something about the displeased look the angel was giving him caught him off guard and made him shift around nervously.

“Oh, good _lord_ Crowley,” Aziraphale said with that disapproving look on his face, his discomfort clearly visible.

The demon rolled his eyes as he tried to defend himself, “I haven’t even used my wings for six centuries, what does it matter?”

“That is no excuse,” Aziraphale chided as he reached for the damp towel.

“Oh no you don’t!” Crowley said in response, backing away. “I’m not going to have my wings groomed by an angel.”

Aziraphale sighed. “Would you please let me help you? I won’t ask again. Please, turn around.”

Crowley groaned, but before he could stop himself he found that he was already turning around. In one last act of defiance he shook his wings out, scattering old black feathers throughout the shop, as well as the wind from his wings scattering loose bits of paper here and there and knocking over a few books. He smirked when he imagined he could physically feel the angel’s eyes trying to melt holes in the back of his skull.

“Keep that up and I’ll pluck every one of your feathers so you look quite like a naked chicken,” Aziraphale grumbled. “Although with your hygiene they appear far more likely to fall out of their own accord before I get the chance.”

Crowley was free to smirk now that Aziraphale couldn’t see his face. Truthfully, it was pretty fun to hear him get so worked up about things. Only sometimes though, which was why he settled down and held still from then on.

Before Aziraphale started, he said, “You’re lucky there’s no such thing as supernatural parasites, or you’d be a living infestation.”

“You’re a supernatural parasite.”

Once again he could feel the angel’s withering glare searing into the back of his head and chuckled to himself at how marvellously clever he’d been.

All of his humour was forgotten, however, as he felt Aziraphale’s hands on the base of his left wing. He had to will himself not to shudder at the strange and unfamiliar touch, but a small shiver spread through his body against his will. If the angel noticed, he didn’t say a word about it. Crowley willed his entire body to relax and tried to get used to the weirdly intimate feeling of a stranger’s hand on his wings.

 _Not a stranger_ , he reminded himself, which strangely did work rather well to calm his nerves. If only he had more alcohol, but he was beginning to worry that it was quite fading off at this point. After a time, though, he decided that it wasn’t necessarily an unpleasant feeling by any means.

Against his better judgement he closed his eyes and let himself enjoy the feeling of Aziraphale’s gentle hands grooming his wings, washing and plucking and straightening his feathers here and there. Every touch sent little sparks of feeling along Crowley’s nervous system, erupting at every point of contact between them. He certainly didn’t expect to enjoy this so much, and yet somehow, regrettably, the attention was extremely satisfying.

There was a horrible feeling in his gut, so disgustingly and agonizingly pleasant it made him sick. He knew this feeling, though. He had been dealing with it off and on for centuries, after all, but he’d never felt it so strongly before. He thoroughly enjoyed every moment he got to spend with that annoying angel, and now more than ever this white-hot feeling in the pit of his stomach told him he wasn’t entirely satisfied with such a relationship as they currently had. If you could even call it a relationship at this point. He wasn’t sure what it was.

It took every ounce of control in Crowley’s body to keep it from shuddering under Aziraphale’s soft and caring hands. It was simply ridiculous. He was a demon! What did he think he was doing running around developing feelings for some bloody angel? But they both also knew it was just as ridiculous to call themselves enemies. How could Crowley be expected to go to war with the one being in the entire universe he didn’t utterly despise? Even, the only being that truly understood him when he thought about it, if only partially. As far as anyone could understand him, anyway.

The two of them probably had more in common than most of their...associates. They really were more human than angel or demon at times, after so long on the planet, but their immortality ensured that they could never get close with any humans, or have any real place among humanity. Surely Aziraphale felt the same way, even if his self-righteous attitude liked to tell him that he was still a loyal angel through and through.

Speak of the angel–Aziraphale said, “Almost finished. Would you mind stretching out this wing a bit so I can reach these pesky feathers?”

“Right,” Crowley said as he obliged and stretched out his right wing, feeling a little exposed after being pulled from his troubling thoughts.

It was now or never, he decided with a nervous gulp.

“Thank you, Angel,” he said with as much sincerity as he could muster. “I don’t think my wings have ever seen such care.” _They do look magnificent_ , he acknowledged briefly, though he didn’t dwell on it.

“Of course,” Aziraphale answered, taken aback by the sentiment. He was just genuinely happy the demon had let him do it.

Crowley struggled past his own discomfort and continued, “I like spending time with you. At least, better than eternity in Hell.”

It was at this moment that he realized he had absolutely no idea how to approach the subject.

“I suppose that’s good to hear. You are most welcome, then,” Aziraphale said sincerely, though something told him that there was a change to the atmosphere that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. “Right, all done.”

Crowley allowed himself to look at the wings again a bit more thoroughly, hoping this would give him the courage to say the words he didn’t have put together yet. Aziraphale watched in awe as the demon spread his infernal black wings experimentally, the now pristine pitch feathers sliding perfectly in rows as they moved. Aziraphale’s eyes followed them, admiring how the black feathers shone with a sort of arcane light in the low-lit conditions of the bookshop.

The wings rippled with unholy majesty, thriving in the dim conditions like any demon’s wings rightly would. Their colour, black as any starless night, was a sign of his fall from Heaven and the fundamental distinction between the two of them. They were unmistakably demonic, and still so much more beautifully Crowley as well.

The demon turned to face Aziraphale, his black feathers fluttering as his wings folded down to a more comfortable position against his back. “Aziraphale, can I ask you something?”

“I suppose so.”

Well, he wasn’t going to make this easy, that was for sure. “Do you like spending time with me too?”

With such an innocent question, Aziraphale was perfectly willing to do just a _bit_ of dangerous reflection. “I do rather enjoy speaking with you on occasion, when our situations allow.”

Nope. Definitely not making this any easier.

“Come on,” Crowley said encouragingly, “admit it: you like our little weekly dates.”

“I wouldn’t call them ‘dates’ perhaps,” Aziraphale tried to reason, “they are meetings designed to discuss our little Antichrist problem.”

Crowley pointed out, “We haven’t even mentioned the brat once since leaving the property tonight.”

The angel began to look troubled at that. “You’re right. We have a task to accomplish yet. Any updates on your end?”

Crowley was beginning to feel a little frustrated. Frustrated at the white-feathered idiot, at himself for having these complicated feelings, and most of all with Heaven and Hell for their ridiculous standards and ways of life. Hell forbid he develop _feelings_.

“That’s the point, isn’t it?” Crowley hissed. “I have no _updates_. You have no _updates_. We’re here preening each other’s _bloody_ wings and you still think of me as the enemy. You still pretend this is all in the name of some idiotic plan that we won’t even be able to see the result of for another six years!”

He had never had a love confession before, but he was fairly certain there wasn’t meant to be this much anger. Why couldn’t he seem to stop himself?

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Aziraphale said sternly back, his own voice rising a bit more than usual, defensively. Did Crowley have a point? Was the angel enjoying their ‘dates’ more than he was meant to? No, they were on opposite sides and he couldn’t lose sight of that, not now. Not when the end was less than a decade away. “I have no feelings for you! We aren’t even human. What, do you expect some kind of relationship? Us?”

The way he said it sent icy daggers through Crowley’s heart. His lips curled in a snarl as he said, “You’ve been out of Heaven long enough, you’d think it would be obvious you don’t belong up there with them! You have more in common with me and you know it. What could be so wrong about being just a little bit human?”

“I’m an angel!” Aziraphale exclaimed in return, his voice cracking. He wasn’t entirely sure what was happening, but he wished it could go back to...whatever it was that they had had before. “You are a demon! It is _absurd_ to think that we could have anything between us but animosity.”

“Then what the heaven do you think has been between us for the last five years?” Crowley hissed, his eyes almost completely yellow as his irises expanded from stress. “Or, Hell forbid, the six thousand bloody years before that?”

Aziraphale was shaking now, though whether from anger or denial or fear Crowley couldn’t tell. “I don’t call it anything. There is nothing whatsoever between us!”

“Then why am I even here?” Crowley roared as a last resort.

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t be!”

There was a long pause. Crowley stood up a little straighter and set his jaw as he stared daggers at the dumb blonde bastard in front of him. It took him several long moments to formulate a coherent response.

“Maybe I shouldn’t be,” he echoed softly, though his eyes burned with anger. At least, he thought it was anger.

Aziraphale glared back, still shaking slightly despite his efforts to control it. “Right then,” was all he managed to say in response.

“Right. Good-bye then.”

Crowley turned on his heel and stormed out of the bookshop, not daring to look behind him at that ridiculous celestial face. The door slammed shut behind him as he stepped out into the dark. He was visibly shaking as he crammed himself into the driver’s side of the Bentley, realizing too late that his wings were still out when he felt them get crushed between his back and the seat. He blessed under his breath at the pain and a second later his wings were gone, perhaps for another six hundred years. His mind was racing; he hissed absentmindedly to himself as he put the car into drive. Within moments he was speeding away as the Bentley’s wheels screeched in protest.

He tore down the streets of London, as far away from that blasted bookshop as he could get.


	6. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley and Aziraphale are left to deal with the aftermath of their disagreement, with little success.

Aziraphale stood in stunned silence for a time, long after the sound of Crowley’s car wheels screeching down the road was nothing but a distant memory. The angel was left in utter silence and solitude once again. For once, he couldn’t fight back the feeling that he had made a grave mistake. Crowley had just...stormed off. Maybe for good.

There were but a few short years until Armageddon, assuming they failed in their task and the Antichrist came into his power. And what then? The war he had been trying to forget about for centuries was rushing back to the forefront of his mind. And Crowley, his best–no, not anymore.

_We were never friends_ , Aziraphale thought to himself stubbornly as he tore his attention away from the door once and for all. But something within him was stirring to life, something angry at the prospect of never seeing the demon again before it all went up in flames in a few years. Or, Heaven forbid, if Aziraphale found himself brandishing a sword licked by golden flames, staring into all-yellow eyes gleaming with hate and bloodlust. The face of his only... _companion_ of six thousand years, contorted in rage and hate, and ready for war.

The image was unsettling, but Aziraphale reflected that it might have been far worse if he could actually picture Crowley like that. Even as a demon, he never seemed entirely evil. If he was ever racked with anger or ferocity he never showed that side to Aziraphale. And if nothing else, at least he had a definite soft spot for kids, which was something the angel was able to pick up on very early in their association with one another. But even when kids weren’t involved it seemed Crowley was never up for anything worse than a bit of mischief. He wasn’t even capable of concocting a scheme more devilish than the things humans came up with themselves, as he had pointed out on many occasions throughout the centuries.

No, he certainly couldn’t picture Crowley as a war-crazed berserker, no more than Aziraphale could picture himself in that role. He felt dread creeping its way into his heart, remembering how he told Crowley to leave in a fit of righteous indignation. Was that really the last time he would see his devilish counterpart before the end of it all?

He snapped to focus and shook his head to clear his thoughts. Deep down he would no doubt continue to fret, but he shoved those thoughts aside and focused on going about his life as he would on any other normal night. It took him a bit too long to remember that on any normal night he would settle in with a good book for the evening. Right, that sounded pleasant enough. He could certainly do with a mental break of sorts and sit down and enjoy one of his favorite books for a few hours to forget the world and anything that might be troubling him.

Aziraphale was rather troubled when he turned his attention to the bookshop, only to discover that it looked as though a raven had exploded all over his shop. He frowned in disapproval as he remembered how Crowley shook his wings and scattered his musty old feathers about the room. Evidently, a good number of the inky-black feathers had made their way outside the back room as well, decorating the floor and even some shelves. He felt disgusted! Although, if he allowed himself to genuinely think about it, maybe he would have related the feeling to something more akin to “heartbreak” than actual disgust, per se. Feelings were fickle things, after all.

It didn’t take long for him to shove all of Crowley’s leavings into a big pile and promptly dispose of them in a rubbish bin. Finally he decided he could relax and see to getting that break he had promised himself. He made some tea and sat heavily into his favorite chair, sighing contentedly as he settled in for the night with a good book in hand.

A part of him was always distracted, though, despite his best efforts. He loosely wondered if he would ever see that wily serpent again. _No_ , he decided inwardly. As a servant of Heaven he couldn’t entertain dangerous thoughts of that devil returning to his shop, begging for a second chance and taking back everything he had said. They had to keep to their respective sides now more than ever. Aziraphale wondered, just a little bit, if they would meet again before the end times, if they did indeed come.

Quoth the angel, “Nevermore.”

~

Crowley leaned back against the custom leather seat of the Bentley with a heavy sigh. His hands still clutched the steering wheel, his knuckles bone-white and aching from the pressure, but he barely felt it through the numbing feeling that filled his whole body.

“Fuck,” he hissed, sounding much more snake-like than he had really intended.

Not that anyone was around to hear him while he was alone in his car, and not that he would have cared at that moment even if they had.

Why did he have to go and ruin everything? They were finally...well, they still weren’t anything, really, but they were consistently spending time together. They had something for the first time in millenia and Crowley took that something and ran it through a wood chipper and put whatever was left in a big box and tossed it into the deepest, darkest depths of the hottest pit in Hell he could find. He should have known it was too good to last. He never got to keep anything good that happened to him. Not that he knew from experience, mind you; he wasn’t sure if anything good had happened to him besides Aziraphale since the Fall.

He blessed under his breath and put his forehead on the steering wheel, closing his eyes and finally letting his death grip relax, his hands falling limply to his sides. But the dull ache he felt wasn’t his fingers, he realized. It was in his chest. It sounded cheesy, but it was true. Closing his eyes had done the opposite of help as well: now all he could think of was whatever torment his mind arranged for him. And now, that torment was the memory of how Aziraphale’s soft hands had felt stroking his wings gently, almost reverently. His hands were so gentle, so caring, but so purposeful all the same. Or the way the angel’s wings felt under his own hands, soft as the finest down pillow brushing against his skin and slipping through his parted fingers as smooth as silk.

Crowley brushed his hair back out of his eyes and sat up, but pulled his hand back in surprise when he felt a foreign object tucked behind his ear. He felt a weird stirring feeling when he pulled it out and recognized one of Aziraphale’s own feathers. Of course, Crowley remembered putting it there as a new “fashion statement”, as he had called it. He felt his lips curl up into a sad little smile at the memory.

He was suddenly very glad for that pointless, almost silly split-second decision to tuck it behind his ear. With the lightest touch he ran a finger along the vane of the feather, feeling only the smallest resistance from the tiny strands of hairs. It really looked and felt like any old feather, except maybe a bit on the large side for a typical bird native to the area. And yet, just knowing it was an angel’s–or, rather, that it was specifically Aziraphale’s–made him regard it with a certain degree of awe.

The more he looked at his new souvenir the more he lost himself to the vortex of his thoughts. He didn’t dare think far enough into the future to imagine them being at war once the world ended; it was painful enough imagining a month into the future without the meetings he had grown so accustomed to, having to see him working out in the garden almost every single day as they raised Warlock.

Or, what’s worse, the angel could decide that he didn’t even care about the heavenly influences over the child anymore. Crowley’s traitorous mind betrayed him by deciding to think further into the future after all, if only slightly. The inevitable war between Heaven and Hell that would break out, should the Antichrist decide it...well, it would tear him apart. He would have given anything to know what that idiot was thinking in that exact moment as he sat slumped in his car in the dark, thinking about a dark and bleak future. Or, rather, the lack thereof.

Crowley knew Aziraphale enjoyed spending time with him; there was no way he had misread the situation that much, or misinterpreted the angel’s eager and energetic nature at all times when they were around each other. The idea that Aziraphale could be standing there still in his shop, stiff as a board in sheer shock even for several long minutes after he had stormed out, had indeed crossed his mind. The thought was enough for him to throw the car into drive again.

He was about to go tearing up the streets of London, break down that bastard’s door, and tell him exactly what they both knew was true. He would storm right up to him and say every last bloody thought on his mind until that white-feathered freak finally came to terms with the reality that there was more between him than he thought, and until he agreed to put his selfish allegiance to Heaven aside and be on Crowley’s side once and for all.

Despite all this the Bentley rumbled quietly in place, idling by the curb and awaiting a command from the driver. It never moved.

With a flip of his finger Crowley switched off the ignition and exited the car in a single fluid movement. He strode over to the entrance to his flat, frowning bitterly the whole way. Aziraphale had made his choice, had told him to leave the bookshop and that was that. When faced with the idea that he and Crowley could even officially be friends, he had been repulsed by it. He was loyal to other angels, and to the same God who had neglected even speaking to him in six thousand years, when Crowley had been the one to walk by his side through it all, since the beginning of time itself. Aziraphale was his own angel. He could make that decision for himself.

He had made his choice, and Crowley had made his long ago. Too bad they chose differently.

The demon stumbled to bed on surprisingly weary feet, not bothering to even change out of his everyday clothes as he collapsed on the silk sheets with a snow-white feather still clutched to his chest. From there he fell quickly into a dark, fitful sleep.

~

It was something of a relief the next day when Crowley sat back in his usual chair to wait out Warlock’s nap, and upon glancing out the window saw the usual old gardener hobble around the property with his baggy clothes and ridiculous hat. At least this meant that Aziraphale still felt a need to do his part in preventing the apocalypse. That was good, right? There may yet be some hope, at least. But Crowley also felt a stab of pain when he recognized him, at the same time, and knew that he was so very far from fine after the way they had left things.

He had done quite a bit of reflecting during his insomnia-plagued night, though little to none of it could be labelled as productive or helpful in any way. And so, naturally, he spent a regrettable amount of his free time over the next week thinking about their last interaction. Occasionally he would see Warlock go eagerly into the garden, and watch almost jealously as Aziraphale would stoop down to talk to him in that kindly way Brother Francis did, acting for all the world as though nothing were wrong. Worse still, it might not have even been an act, Crowley pondered bitterly. It probably wasn’t, now that he thought about it. The angel was more or less care free now that he was rid of the burden of some washed-up fallen angel pestering him incessantly.

If only Crowley knew.

Aziraphale was more affected by their argument than he himself realized. Despite his better judgement he caught himself glancing up at the windows to the mansion hoping to catch a glimpse of Nanny Ashtoreth. If Crowley was ever there, though, he never saw him through the dark windows. Nanny never even followed Warlock into the garden anymore as he had done at least occasionally in the past, so Aziraphale was beginning to think the demon had already moved on and stopped caring about whatever it was that they had. It would make sense, him being a demon and incapable of love and all, according to most sources.

But maybe that was all the better for the greater good, Aziraphale began to think. He wasn’t sure what he would do if he had to actually _see_ Crowley every day. Their confrontation had accomplished one thing, though he refused to address it: he was now vaguely aware of the fact that he undoubtedly cared about Crowley. What that meant, exactly...well, he wasn’t about to go through the danger of speculating. Above all else he had to remain loyal to Heaven, even if that meant a bit of self-sacrifice.

Besides, knowing Crowley, if he cared as much as he claimed then he surely would have made an effort to reach out to Aziraphale. He would apologize, or even just call to ask if they were still on for their usual weekly meetings, and then all would be right again as Aziraphale inevitably caved to his devilish persuasion. He definitely would have turned up somehow or other, if he really was so insistent that there was something between them.

Aziraphale knew he was in trouble when he walked away from the Dowling estate precisely one week after their last meeting. In all that week he had caught only a small glimpse of Crowley in his usual undercover attire, just enough to be assured that he was indeed still working there as well. It had been a rather short glimpse of him walking into the home one morning, but something about his appearance made Aziraphale think that he was most undisturbed by their little argument.

And now the angel couldn’t hide his feelings quite so much from himself, try as he might. It most definitely killed him to know that Crowley never tried to talk to him again after that. All that day he had debated whether or not he would check to see if Crowley’s Bentley was waiting for him in its usual spot, but that was foolish. They had cancelled. _He_ had cancelled. He couldn’t go galavanting off with some demon when he had a job to do, and Crowley no doubt never gave him a second thought throughout the week, just as he feared. No, he wasn’t sure he could take his usual route that day and see that empty spot, letting the faintest glimmer of hope shrivel up in his chest when there was inevitably no one there.

But, sure enough, Crowley was waiting for him. He was waiting for several hours, actually. Each flicker of movement sparked some desperate hope in him that was dashed a second later when he discovered that it was just some wild animal or a car passing through the trees in the distance. It was silly to hope that the angel would turn up, he knew, just like that. Absentmindedly he opened the glove compartment of the car and pulled out the long white feather he had stashed there for safekeeping, running a finger along its length as he tortured himself with the desperate hope that Aziraphale would turn up.

But he could only wait so long before he had to give up.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Warlock gets older, Crowley and Aziraphale realize that they may have to change their influential tactics, and just maybe start working together once again.

Aziraphale was taking their separation about as well as Crowley was and about as well as could be expected, since he really was experiencing these strange feelings more or less for the first time. It was certainly the first time he had really allowed them to show, at least. It was as if the end of the week had been a catalyst, sparking the chemical reaction of realization in his lonely mind.

A week had gone by with no sign from Crowley, and now he was convinced that the demon had given up on him entirely. What else could he expect from a demon, after all? Though, maybe Aziraphale shouldn’t have been so...harsh. Now he knew he cared about Crowley and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. The next few years, ironically, felt like they would be a living hell.

He walked into his bookshop with a sad sigh and felt a little twinge of pain again when he noticed a few scattered remnants of Crowley’s visit around the shop. Here and there a spare black feather had snuck past his initial cleaning, and now they served to remind him of the torment of human emotion that had grown only too familiar over the centuries, and especially in the past few days. He went about the shop picking up the stray buggers and promptly tossed them all out.

Well, mostly all of them.

He was rather bored, actually. He wasn’t one to enjoy sleeping too often and as much as he loved reading and re-reading every single book in his vast arsenal of scripts, there was the occasional time that he found it rather pleasant to enjoy some other things. Crafts were a fun alternative, for one. Perhaps it was an angelic trait that caused this side effect sort of hobby: the desire to _create_ , and bring new things to life. Most might miracle things into existence on a whim, while he had always favored doing it all by hand.

The feathers had merely given him an interesting idea of what he could do to spend the night, he reasoned. He set one of the feathers down on his desk, a large and particularly pristine-looking one. _At least compared to the other options_ , he thought a tad judgmentally as he hurried away.

When he returned to the desk he was carrying an assortment of odd items which he dumped unceremoniously onto the surface. He spent a brief moment sorting out some of the things he would need first and settled down into the chair. Last of all, he grabbed his reading glasses and placed them neatly on the bridge of his nose. Not for necessity in any way, mind you, but so that he could really fall into the role of being human for a time. The whole experience just felt that much more immersive when he was able to do those little things that humans would.

With careful hands he picked up the feather and briefly looked it over, looking for any flaws he might have missed and making a note of its natural curve before he set to work. With careful fingers, he grabbed a scalpel-like instrument and trimmed off pieces of the shaft. He knew feathers were tough, of course, but it was an easy thing to forget until you were trying to chop them up so precisely with only a tiny knife. But he did succeed eventually, moving on to whittle at it until it reached a perfect point he was satisfied with. It took a good deal longer than expected for him to make it perfect, but such was the price of perfection.

He did some other things to touch it up, but otherwise he was content with his rather lovely new quill. Without a moment’s hesitation he grabbed some of the sheets of paper he had brought over, as well as the bottle of rather plain black ink. He eagerly dipped the quill into the ink and scrawled his own name on the first page, for lack of a better topic at first thought. Aziraphale decided that his handwriting was much too messy for such an instrument, but it would have to do. Of course, most people might have been envious of his flowing script when he put some effort into it, but then they wouldn’t have known that penmanship was an art he had had a chance to practice for centuries.

No matter, he was still happy to have this fabulous new addition to his desk. Deciding he wasn’t quite content just leaving it and giving up his role of simple human for the night, though, he decided to try his hand at writing poetry again. It was a rather fun way to pass the time, he had found, and the writing came much easier to him when he was fitting into the role of human and letting himself get a little more emotionally charged than usual.

Still, it was a bit surprising how easily the words came to him this time, as even he, an angel, would often sit for hours waiting for inspiration to strike. Now it seemed as though he was racing himself, desperate to dip the quill in the ink fast enough to write for fear that the poetry in his mind would escape before he had a chance to write it down.

If only he knew the cause of it. What he failed to fully understand was that many humans have a knack for creative bouts when they are experiencing emotional turmoil. By the time he set the quill down it felt as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders somewhat, and he let out a pleased and relieved sigh as he sat back in his chair.

_Dreck_ , he thought at once as he looked the poem over fully for the first time. He crumpled the paper angrily and tossed it aside. Poetry wasn’t for everyone, he decided gloomily as he stood up from his chair and made the decision to read through the rest of the night, as he thought he probably should have done from the very beginning.

~

Several weeks passed with both angel and demon secretly hoping the other would be the one to reach out in some way. And Crowley waited every week for a little over a month, as usual...just in case. Just far enough from the Dowling estate that it didn’t seem suspicious, of course, but still just close enough that he hoped Aziraphale could see him. And maybe he could and just chose to ignore him. It seemed the more likely option, after all. Still he would sit there, cursing himself for losing sleep over someone who clearly wouldn’t give him a second thought. Or was he blessing himself, being a demon and all? Well, it didn’t matter.

Meanwhile Aziraphale, stubborn as ever, never bothered checking to see if he was there. He just wouldn’t allow his mind to entertain that hope, especially when he knew he should resist in the name of Heaven. And certainly Crowley wouldn’t be there. Especially after several weeks had passed.

Eventually he was right, and Crowley got tired of waiting. As the months wore on he also got tired of looking out the window at the gardner as he fed his birds. It wasn’t that he had much of a choice to do so anymore, though; Warlock was getting a bit too old for naps and required more consistent observation after a time. He kept Crowley on his toes soon enough, and it was quickly becoming apparent that he would be wanting something other than a nanny to raise him. He would be needing a more sophisticated school-like structure, in time.

It also seemed very apparent to Aziraphale that Warlock was quite outgrowing his days of playing in the garden as well. He had rather decided that it was much more fun to stay inside and play the newest video games as they came out, and the outside world began to lose its glamour. Of course Nanny encouraged him to play games, especially the more violent kind in the hopes that it would influence him negatively.

In any case, Aziraphale was thoroughly worried about how he would continue to influence Warlock at this point. It was no good at all to spend his days sitting in the garden when he hardly caught a glimpse of the child anymore. As he informed his superiors that he would be retiring, he sadly reflected that it had been just under a year since his last encounter with Crowley. Try as he might, he couldn’t hide the fact that he was beginning to hope he would get to see him again.

_No!_ He had to berate himself mentally whenever the thought crossed his mind. It was ridiculous to imagine being with Crowley in any way again, friendship or otherwise. Things were finally as they rightfully should be, with angel and demon staying well out of each other’s way and having nothing whatsoever to do with each other.

About a week later Aziraphale was returning to the Dowling estate with a new appearance and a strengthened constitution. He had tossed aside the act of Brother Francis and replaced it with a significantly more refined look, one that suited his actual taste just a bit better. He wore business casual attire (still too casual for his preference, but it would have to do) and had only minor tweaks to his physical appearance that made it so any passerby at first glance wouldn’t be able to think they recognized him as the man they’d maybe seen once or twice around London.

He gave a sharp knock on the door of the mansion, then busied himself fixing his already immaculate clothes and otherwise fidgeting nervously. He couldn’t help hoping, just for the briefest moment, that Crowley himself would happen to open the door. To his disappointment it was some other woman he didn’t recognize who answered. But she was a beautiful young girl with a bright smile on her face, and it was hard to be sad in the presence of such a thing.

“You must be the new tutor!” she said warmly as she beckoned him inside. “Mr…?”

“Cortese, my dear. Mr. Cortese,” he answered, returning every ounce of her kindness enthusiastically.

She led the way inside and he eagerly followed as she explained, “A study has been assigned for Warlock. You and the other tutor will have to share the space but it shouldn’t be a problem. If there is any trouble we can see about making new accomodations, if you like.”

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Aziraphale said, partially as a lie. He was rather concerned about the mention of someone else, since he thought it would be a little awkward trying to influence the child if he had to contend with the constant surveillance of a human as well. “Er, you said something about another tutor?”

“Oh yes, just came in yesterday himself. Right in here,” the woman said as she stopped before a door and opened it, allowing Aziraphale to step inside.

The sight was certainly quite a surprise. Young Warlock sat at a desk in the middle of a surprisingly large study, fidgeting as he more or less paid attention to a man who was giving some dramatic lecture at the head of the room. When the door opened both inhabitants turned to see who it was, and Aziraphale was shocked to see that the other tutor was none other than Crowley.

The demon had tweaked his facial features just a bit, as the angel had done, but he had changed his clothes much more dramatically, and crazier still was the fact that he had changed his hairstyle yet again. His fiery hair was now done up in a sort of quiff style, and his lanky form was framed by his own style of business casual clothing. From the almost startled look on his face he undoubtedly recognized Aziraphale as well, but he swiftly hid his surprise underneath a deceptively warm smile. He was even wearing contacts instead of his sunglasses, which disguised his hellish yellow eyes as subtle brownish-gold with perfectly normal, rounded pupils. He was actually almost unrecognizable to the untrained human eye, but there was still that unmistakable sixth sense about him that was undoubtedly demonic. Or, rather, undoubtedly Crowley.

Aziraphale felt his whole body grow cold at the sight of him. Well, that maybe should have been normal, with him being a demon after all, but it was for an entirely different reason than that. He was scared for some unexpected and outrageously human reason that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. All he knew was that he felt both terribly annoyed and delighted to see him again.

Now, being a demon comes with a certain set of innate skills that usually come in handy in many situations. Not the least of which includes the ability to lie convincingly and deceive with perfect success every time. And, naturally, something about Aziraphale always seemed to cripple this innate ability in Crowley so that even his greatest concentration couldn’t perfectly hold up his cool facade . When he recognized the angel’s presence he knew for certain that the barest hint of emotion had cracked through the surface. Though what that emotion was would be anyone’s guess: he was feeling just about all of them in that moment.

But he did his very demonic best to give a convincingly genuine smile as he said, “Ah, hullo! I’m Mr. Harrison. I’m tutoring the young master here in mathematics, science, and world history.”

Aziraphale choked back his mixture of shock, anger, and glee as he fumbled over his reply, “I, er, well, I’m Mr. C-Cortese, you see. I teach world history as well, and the arts.”

“Charmed,” the demon answered shortly. He was smiling, but his true expression was entirely unreadable.

“If everything’s all right then, I’ll leave you to it,” the woman said happily.

Clearly she wasn’t picking up on the incredible tension in the air, or maybe they both just imagined that the air was thick enough to be cut with a butterknife. In any case, she dismissed herself from the room before either had a chance to stop her and they were left alone. Or, well, mostly alone, if you include the young Antichrist absentmindedly picking his nose between them.

Aziraphale shot the boy an awkward glance before shifting his gaze back to Crowley, an unspoken request written all over his face.

Luckily Crowley was able to catch on and addressed the boy, “Why don’t you go and work on that bit of homework I gave you in the hall. We won’t be long.”

The now six-year-old gave him a rather blank stare before doing as he was told and leaving the study. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to send him off on his own when they were charged with watching him, Crowley thought, but it would probably be alright for a few minutes, anyway. As soon as the door clicked shut behind him Crowley felt the crushing blow of a year of unresolved tension and feelings that threatened to make him utterly snap. The only ones he was really willing to let out, though, were those relating to his frustration.

But it was Aziraphale who broke the silence first by saying, almost conversationally, “What are you doing here?”

Crowley said, a little more calmly than he had expected his voice to sound, “ _I_ am doing my job influencing the Antichrist. What are _you_ doing here?”

“Well, I daresay I had the same idea.”

There was a long silence that stretched between them, as neither one was quite sure how to continue. Crowley had been fairly certain that he was angry with Aziraphale for kicking him out, then he had hated him even more for standing him up every week afterwards (even though they hadn’t agreed to meet anyway, but it still hurt). He was certainly furious with that stupid angel.

So why was he so damn happy to see him again? Seething, burning anger–that most definitely existed–aside, this could be an opportunity for him to propose that they work together again. All for the good of the world, of course.

Crowley cleared his throat. “Well, point is I’m in the middle of my first lesson on Vlad the Impaler, so if you will excuse me-”

“You can’t teach a six-year-old boy about Vlad the Impaler!” Aziraphale burst out. He lunged for Crowley’s hand before he had a chance to turn away and the demon stopped dead in his tracks when he felt the light touch on his arm. He listened intently as the angel continued, oddly almost pouting as he said, “I know what you are doing and I want no part in it.”

“I’m doing my demonic duty, Angel,” Crowley stated simply. “Would be a real shame if Mr. Cortese taught young Warlock about all the good in the world.”

Aziraphale looked thoroughly troubled at that. He put aside the immediate concern as he remembered what he was truly worried about, and he had to bring it up again for his own peace of mind. “My first and only responsibility is to Heaven, and you put that loyalty into question that night.”

Crowley’s heart sank. He was about to feign ignorance and ask which night he happened to be talking about, but that would only make the problem worse. No, he had to continue with his plan and insist with the idea. Especially if he wanted any chance of things being back to normal with the angel.

“I’ll say it again,” Crowley said, feigning apathy as he did, “upstairs can’t complain with you thwarting the wiles of the evil one at every turn and whatnot. They know you’re the only one who can keep up with me anyway.”

There was a pause again, but this time it told Crowley that the temptation was beginning to work.

“If not for Heaven, and not for me…” Crowley shrugged, “...do it for the books. Your bookshop and-and your little restaurants and what have you.”

The demon knew he sounded much less organized than he had the first time, but he was unprepared and more than a little desperate at this point. Nonetheless the point was the same, and it did seem to have some effect on the angel. Crowley could see it clearly: Aziraphale’s resolve was melting like butter in his manipulative, albeit clumsy fingers. The angel had a soft spot for earthly pleasures, and clumsy or not the demon was still fully prepared to exploit that.

“Oh, all right,” Aziraphale conceded with an exasperated sigh.

Crowley barely resisted the urge to cheer triumphantly. “All right then. Care to join my lecture?”

Aziraphale sighed as he reluctantly agreed and said somewhat sarcastically, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”


	8. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At last they seem to have recovered something of their old friendship, which only means

Warlock had a very short attention span at first, so the tutoring sessions could only really go on so long. Still, Crowley and Aziraphale (or rather, Mr. Harrison and Mr. Cortese) were able to teach him all manner of subjects. At one point Aziraphale asked why Crowley was so keen on mathematics and the demon had answered that it was another thing that Hell assumed was his responsibility, not understanding that humans were rather bent on making things more difficult for themselves for no good reason. All it meant was that Crowley had to acquire a basic understanding of mathematics in case he was ever asked about it. Luckily Aziraphale was fairly good at mathematics himself and able to help on that front.

Despite being arguably better at sciences than the demon, Aziraphale taught Warlock about subjects that he was personally more fond of, such as music, art, and literature, of course. Except that, quite without realizing it, they had both rubbed off on each other’s lessons just a little bit over time. Crowley would, on rare occasions, teach Warlock about astronomy. It was innocent at first, since astronomy was connected to science and by extension connected loosely to mathematics. Unbeknownst to him, his lessons began to lean more towards the boundless beauty of the cosmos than they probably should have been.

Meanwhile, Aziraphale was prone to slightly darker influences as well. Against his better judgement, he began teaching Warlock about some of the darker aspects of literature. Edgar Allan Poe ended up being a fun lesson, and the angel didn’t think until later that it might have been a poor choice to expose a young child to such dark literary elements. But he didn’t pick up on some of the other darker themes that were not all that uncommon in his lessons.

Neither of the supernatural entities seemed to notice these subtle changes, for that matter. Indeed, the only thing Crowley found noteworthy about Warlock’s fascination with Edgar Allan Poe was that it gave him a certain fascination with cats. By extension, he hoped, that would mean he would be less inclined to keep a Hell Hound for a pet.

And, in time, they worked together to teach Warlock one of their mutual favorite subjects: history. Granted, they had a wealth of mostly useless information about history, such as some of the finest restaurants in ancient Greece, or the magnificent hanging gardens of Babylon, or even some of the finer places to get a drink throughout the ancient world, and weirdly enough it wasn’t exactly the sort of information that is normally relevant to a small child some two thousand years later.

But that is exactly why they conveniently had history textbooks, which the two would often laugh at together in their spare time. History was, after all, written by the victors, leaving much fine culture far behind. But they had to teach a modern understanding of history, so the textbooks would have to do.

Crowley obviously favored teaching Warlock about some of the evil dictators and brutal villains of history, while Aziraphale honed in on some of the more inspiring and kinder moments of the ancient world…which ended up being relatively few and far between, but he did what he could. It took several weeks, but the two eventually settled into something of a rhythm with their teachings. And, in time, they began to forget all about their previous hardships.

Crowley was beginning to enjoy their brief time together again, perhaps too much now that he was sure Aziraphale wasn’t as comfortable with the idea of them being together in any way. He wanted things back to the way they were, with them being comfortable and trusting, and able to spend time together without it meaning anything. Of course, he _did_ want it to mean something, but it was clear that the angel was once again trying to take things as slowly as inhumanly possible, and Crowley was cautious to avoid shattering this fragile bridge of peace that had formed between them.

That was exactly why it was such a surprise when Aziraphale approached him one moment with an entirely unreadable expression on his face soon after they had dismissed Warlock for the day. His expression seemed…apologetic? Nervous? Dejected? Crowley couldn’t quite put his finger on whatever it was, but it probably meant something good, or terrible.

“Crowley,” the angel addressed cautiously, the seriousness of his tone perhaps hinting that this conversation was going to be leaning toward the latter. Crowley braced himself for the worst as Aziraphale continued, “I wanted to, er…apologize. For how I treated you, a while ago.”

The demon’s eyes narrowed the slightest bit, but he tried to remain mostly expressionless as he responded brusquely, “Nothing to apologize for. You thought we were getting a bit too…friendly, since we’ve only known each other since the beginning of _time_.” There was far more venom in his tone than he had intended, and he could only hope that the other wouldn’t notice.

“Yes, yes, I know,” Aziraphale said with some frustration as he fidgeted with his hands behind his back. “I may have reacted a bit rashly and I would like to make it up to you, if you’d be amenable.”

Crowley’s spirits lifted just the slightest bit. “What did you have in mind?”

Aziraphale’s lip twitched as he tried to shrug nonchalantly and said carefully, “If you’re free…we could go out for lunch.”

Aziraphale thought that it was a pretty reasonable suggestion, considering. He thought he even saw the demon perk up a bit at the idea. Then again, it was surprisingly difficult to read his expression when he was wearing contacts as opposed to his usual sunglasses.

“Well,” Crowley said with an answering shrug, “I think I could spare an hour or two.”

Except that an hour or two quite naturally turned into the better part of a day.

Currently, Crowley was getting out of the Bentley and following Aziraphale into his bookshop in the late afternoon with the promise of another night of drinking and nonsensical conversation. There was a little contented smile on his face as he couldn’t help but feel that things were finally starting to–just a little bit–return to the way they used to be.

Lunch had quickly gone from somewhat awkward and forced to the usual nature of the meetings that they had previously enjoyed up until a little over a year ago. What’s better is that Aziraphale seemed to be enjoying himself quite a lot, and Crowley noted with relief that it was almost as if nothing had happened between them.

Almost.

The angel showed no sign of things being any different from the way they were before. It was nice...at first. But Crowley had a growing feeling in his chest that gnawed at him the more time they spent together and reminded him of why they had separated in the first place. The fact was, he was beginning to feel once more that there was something else between them and he was entirely certain he wasn’t imagining it. But he also knew that Aziraphale wouldn’t appreciate a fresh visit to that old conversation. Truth be told, that thought stung quite a bit more than it should have.

Heaven, he didn’t even know how he liked Aziraphale himself. He couldn’t bear the thought of ruining this fragile friendship he had only just gotten back when Aziraphale had reacted so terribly the last time he had merely pointed out that they enjoyed each other’s company. Even though the angel clearly knew that there was something more between them.

Did Crowley even want to be anything more than friends? No, he couldn’t even let himself consider anything like that when he was still battling with Aziraphale to confess their friendship to begin with. It was much easier said than done, even though anyone with eyes–or even possibly some rather perceptive blind people–could easily tell how much the angel enjoyed their time together. And he _had_ invited Crowley entirely of his own accord. Maybe…?

No, he didn’t dare get ahead of himself, not now that their relationship was finally on the mend.

He shook away the troubling roller coaster of his thoughts as Aziraphale held the door of the bookshop open for him. He stepped inside and took a good, long look at the space and gave a small smile. It was far too messy for his taste, as usual, and it told him that it really hadn’t changed all that much in the time he’d been gone. It was good to be back.

Although he did notice one small difference before the door even had time to close behind Aziraphale.

The angel felt heat rising to his cheeks against his will as he stepped into the shop and saw Crowley standing there, twirling a black feather quill in his slender fingers with a knowing look on his face.

“How long’ve you had this, I wonder?” Crowley asked mischievously as he inspected the quill in the warm light that poured into the room from the window.

There was no use trying to pretend the feather had come from some bird; Crowley, despite his teasing, was no doubt very aware that it was one of his very own feathers that he had left littered about the shop that one night. But why was Aziraphale so nervous for him to discover it? It was only a writing utensil, really.

One that happened to be made from a rather personal... _keepsake_ from a friend. Oh, there was no good word for turning a demon feather into a quill that held a good deal of emotional attachment for him after a year, all without his prior knowledge.

“Well, I was in need of a pen of sorts shortly after you left, then. I, er, uh...the shop was _riddled_ with them, you see,” Aziraphale explained, hoping that despite his hesitation it sounded somewhat convincing.

Crowley smirked as he set the quill down, then leaned his hip against the desk and crossed his arms as he said, “Funny, I would have thought you would have at least one pen on hand. Or you could easily run to a shop down the road and buy one. For no trouble at all. It would certainly take less time than crafting a new one from scratch, I would think.”

He was more than a little pleased with himself to know by the look on Aziraphale’s face and the way he fidgeted uncomfortably at the suggestion that he had stumbled on the right idea. At the same time he felt a pang of sadness. This just further proved that the angel had some attachment to him at least, but continued with the charade he had entertained for six thousand years. Still he held the cheeky grin on his face, knowing this at the very least confirmed that his feelings were not entirely unreciprocated after all.

Crowley continued, “And I know you like to keep things a little on the messier... _lived in_ side, but after our little set-to I would have thought you would have rid this place of any sign of me.”

Aziraphale looked rather miserable as he said, “Oh, all right! I did some thinking and I came to realize that I missed you, all right? But you never tried to contact me again and, oh, I don’t know, I wasn’t about to make a big deal of it. I thought it would be best if I could try to forget all about you.”

Obviously that plan hadn’t worked very well for him since Crowley now stood in the middle of his bookshop once again, but he wasn’t about to make that point when Aziraphale had stirred up something much more troubling.

The demon scoffed, “I never reached out?” It took him a moment to realize that Aziraphale would be waiting for an explanation. “Well, I...I kept hoping for a while that you’d still turn up. So I was there...with the car. For our meetings.”

It felt awkward to finally confess it, like he hadn’t realized until now how desperate it really sounded out loud. He also didn’t realize how much it bothered him until he said it aloud. He felt the slightest hint of a blush creeping into his own cheeks as the angel’s only immediate reaction was to form a surprised “O” with his mouth.

Aziraphale felt more the fool now, though. How long had Crowley waited there, he wondered. And all that time he had wanted to go, but his own stubbornness had warned against it! And was the demon feeling any emotional turmoil over it? He realized then just how badly he wanted to actually know exactly where they stood with each other.

The one time Crowley had tried to talk about their friendship–and indeed he was sure that’s what it was at the time–he had suffered for it. And now, again, it felt much too soon to talk about such things. Even now his angelic loyalty was on edge at the thought of being friends with a demon, and he wanted nothing to do with such a discussion. He hoped to leave the matter for now, until he could hopefully wait to address it when he was ready.

“Well, I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said finally, lamely, flashing Crowley a genuinely meaningful and apologetic smile. “And I’m sorry if the, er, quill makes you uncomfortable in any way. I can toss it out if you like. I suppose it would have been common courtesy to at least ask first.”

“‘S okay,” Crowley said, making a face as he reached into his pocket and struggled to fish something out. “Makes us square. Though as a demon maybe it’s fine for me to be hypocritical.”

In a moment Aziraphale saw why he was rambling in such a self-conscious manner. He dug around in his pocket until he finally managed to pull out a single white feather. It was messy and unkempt now, and the tip was bent and crooked from being cramped in his too-small pocket for who knows how long, but it was undoubtedly Aziraphale’s own feather from that same night.

Crowley caught him staring at it in shock and his blush deepened, feeling sure that the look was a negative one. “Nngh, like you said...probably should have asked. Only fair and all. ‘S a little weird, I know.”

“No, no, it’s quite all right,” Aziraphale said honestly.

Truth be told it was oddly flattering that all this time he had worried that the demon had moved on so easily, and yet here was his proof to the contrary. Maybe he should have seen it as a little odd. In any case, he was certain that he wasn’t ready to face Crowley’s true feelings about him, or even his own feelings for that matter, but he rested assured for now that the demon had only the best of intentions in mind. Not that there had ever been any real doubt on that front, but it was an easier thing to assume was the main problem than the real truth: that he was undoubtedly experiencing _some_ feelings for the friend he should have considered a mortal enemy.

Crowley tucked the angel feather back into the cramped pocket without another thought, feeling both ashamed and a little bit relieved at finally confessing what had been weighing on his mind for over a year. And he felt just a little bit better about where he stood with the angel...wherever that was. He leaned against the desk a little more heavily as he regarded Aziraphale thoughtfully.

“What would you like to do now?” the demon asked in an attempt to avert the mood away from their uncomfortable reminiscing.

Aziraphale was all for the change as he suggested teasingly, “What would you say to ‘quite extraordinary amounts of alcohol’?”

“I’d say ‘lead the way’,” Crowley answered with a devilish grin.


	9. Chapter Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The time has finally come to see Warlock come into his power. But, as you probably know, things don't go exactly according to plan.

“Look what they used to think dinosaurs looked like.”

“Whatever.”

“They’re old, and educational.”

“It’s dumb,” the ten year-old boy said boredly as he brushed his black hair out of his eyes.

His mother was quickly losing patience with him as she countered, “It’s not dumb, sweetie, it’s a dinosaur.”

“Dumbasaur, more like,” the boy joked, not really caring. He had other concerns on his mind. “Can we talk about my birthday party? Why can’t we have my party in an escape room?”

His mother began to explain in annoyance, “Honey, for the last time, we’ve already hired a-”

“But _mom_!”

Crowley had long since been ignoring their conversation entirely, deep in thought as he evaluated how the Antichrist had...turned out. For all their work he turned out to be a completely normal human brat by the look of him. But Crowley couldn’t shake the sneaking suspicion that he seemed _too_ normal.

“Well, we’ve done everything we can,” the demon said with a resigned sigh. “All we can do now is wait for his birthday. The Hell Hound will be the key. Shows up at 3:00 on Wednesday.”

Aziraphale had been sitting rather contentedly on the bench beside Crowley, and now felt a trill of fear at his words. Or, rather, a bit of frustration even. He turned to him and said, affronted, “Right. You’ve never actually mentioned a Hell Hound before.”

The demon looked slightly guilty as he glanced over at him and explained, “Oh...yeah, they’re sending him a Hell Hound to pad by his side and guard him from all harm.”

“Oh,” was all Aziraphale said in response, frowning.

Crowley thought a little explanation might be in order, not that it would really help matters. “Biggest one they’ve got.”

Aziraphale jumped in then, “Won’t people remark on the sudden appearance of a huge black dog? His parents, for a start?”

“No one will notice anything,” Crowley assured him. “It’s reality, Angel. And young Warlock can do what he likes with that, whether he knows it or not. It’s the start of it all. The boy’s meant to name it. Umm...Stalks by Night, Throat-Ripper, something like that. _But_ , if you and I have done our job properly, then he’ll send it away unnamed.”

He reflected hopefully for a moment on the memory that he had seemed to grow into more of a cat person. Maybe that would help somewhat.

“What if he does name it?” Aziraphale asked with mounting concern, pulling him back to reality.

“Then you and I have lost, he’ll have all his powers, and Armageddon will be only days away.”

Aziraphale looked more than a little troubled at the thought, worrying that it just might be possible after all. Mournfully, desperately, he said, “There must be some way of stopping it.”

Now it merely came down to an idea that had occurred to Crowley before, but one that he had rather hoped to avoid. “If there was no boy...then the process would stop,” he suggested, looking Aziraphale meaningfully in the eyes, though he realized afterwards that it wouldn’t be much use with his sunglasses but he could hope that the point got across anyway.

Not that Aziraphale seemed to catch on to what he was proposing. “Yes, but there is a boy. He’s over there, writing a rude word on a description of a dinosaur.”

“Well, there is a boy now. That could change.” Aziraphale, daft bastard that he was, seemed oblivious as ever to the offer. Crowley pursued the topic more insistently, cooing suggestively, “Something could happen to him.”

The angel still held that blank look on his idiotic face.

In exasperation Crowley finally blurted out, “I’m saying you could kill him.”

Realization dawned on Aziraphale’s face then. He reflected aloud, “I’ve never actually...killed anything. I don’t think I could.”

Crowley knew what he was asking of his friend; knew how much it would eat him up from the inside to even consider. He had briefly entertained the idea of doing it himself, but since the Antichrist was his special charge such an act would be utterly unforgivable in Hell’s eyes. And besides that he was fairly certain he couldn’t bring himself to do it even if Hell wasn’t an issue.

Even as a demon, he had a particular soft spot for kids that no one else came close to knowing about, except he was sure Aziraphale was starting to catch on after the whole Noah’s Ark incident. No, the angel definitely knew about his weakness for children after all these centuries, and that must have been the only reason that he seemed to be considering it for even a moment. It was a terrible thing to ask of his friend, but he had to try. He had to reach into the last of his reserves of temptation to appeal to the angel.

“Not even to save _everything_?” Crowley asked, almost pleaded. He let a world of temptation hover in the air over those words, reminding him of all the earthly pleasures he would be giving up if the world turned to ash. And, Hell forbid, if it came to them fighting on opposite sides of the war to end all wars. “One life...against the universe.”

Crowley rather felt like he had opened up just a bit too much in that moment. Right then he knew, deep down, what meant the universe to him. But he couldn’t face that thought, not now. Probably not ever, and certainly never if he couldn’t persuade the angel to see things his way for once.

It killed him to see the crushed look on Aziraphale’s face as he turned to him and spoke with the faintest trace of hope, “Then, this Hell Hound, it’ll show up at his birthday party?”

“Yeah…” Crowley answered skeptically as he wondered what he was getting at.

“Well, then we should be there. Maybe I can stop the dog.”

Crowley wasn’t sure where this was going, but something told him he wasn’t going to like it.

His worst fears were confirmed when Aziraphale’s features set in determination and he said, “In fact, I could entertain.”

Crowley’s heart dropped. “No, no, no. _Please_ , no. No.”

“I just need to get back into practice,” Aziraphale announced with growing excitement as he flexed his fingers and fished a coin out of his pocket.

“Oh, no, no. Don’t do your magic act,” the demon pleaded desperately. “Please. _Please_! I’m actually begging you.”

The angel ignored him completely as he started some silly routine, “blowing” the coin clean out of his hand as he made overly-dramatic sound effects with his own mouth. He clumsily dropped the coin on the ground as he tried to make it disappear and swiftly doubled over to snatch it up and continue with the demonstration.

“You have no idea how demeaning that is,” Crowley whined. “Please.”

Aziraphale continued to pay him no mind as he magically pulled the coin right out of the demon’s very own ear with another dramatic sound effect, as if Crowley didn’t very clearly understand how this age-old trick was done.

“In your finger,” Crowley accused at once.

“No, it was in your ear,” the angel insisted stubbornly.

“It was in your pocket, then you-”

“It was _close_ to your ear.”

Crowley countered, “Never _anywhere_ near my ear.”

Aziraphale sat back down on the bench with a dejected look on his face, though it looked just a little bit intentional as well. He had truthfully enjoyed their banter, even if he did rather hope that one day Crowley would get to see the fun in human “magic”.

“You’re no fun,” he said with mock disappointment.

“ _Fun_?”

“Yes.”

“It’s humiliating,” Crowley said with disgust, though a piece of him was admittedly a little happier and more than a little awed when he realized what had happened. Not by the magic, mind you, but by the angel’s ability to take a tense and terrifying moment and make it light again. He felt better about whatever the future held in store for them. Even if Armageddon came in a few short days...he was happy that he could share these last days with his oldest friend.

Damn him for making things all cheery and happy in light of their inevitable destruction. And, of course, he had to keep up face now. He was, after all, still rather annoyed at the angel’s insistence on doing everything by hand when real miracles were so much easier and readily at their disposal. And he wasn’t even _good_ at fake magic, like some humans were.

“You can do proper magic,” Crowley pointed out with a disgusted look on his face and a small shrug of his shoulders. “You can make things disappear.”

“But it’s not as fun,” Aziraphale explained dejectedly.

The demon looked away in feigned annoyance as he muttered, “Make you disappear.”

The look Aziraphale gave him in response suggested that he didn’t fall for the false annoyance for a moment, not really.

Good, Crowley thought with a little inward smile that he wouldn’t quite let reach the surface. _Wouldn’t be any fun if he couldn’t figure me out a little bit by now_.

If only Aziraphale knew just how well he could read Crowley when he tried: like any number of the books he had hoarded and all but memorized from tireless re-reading over the centuries.

~

“Where has he got to?” the clumsy magician inquired of the apathetic audience before him. “Is he in here?...Somewhere?”

The only thing that would have betrayed the crowd’s interest better would be the cliche sound of chirping crickets.

“There he is! Ha! This-” he stopped mid-sentence as a deck of playing cards seemed to erupt from his hands, making a mess of his makeshift stage. “...We’ll come back to that one.”

Most of the kids had stopped paying attention quite early on in the act, the majority of their attention now turned to phones, or gaming devices, or mindlessly picking at blades of grass; anything besides the dreadful magician before them. The few who still watched the show only did so because they were the unlucky few who had no such technology to play with, and whose minds felt so much like melted jelly that they couldn’t so much as force themselves to even fidget with the grass as others did.

But the magician carried on as enthusiastically as ever, never letting his audience dismay him as he continued, “You see, it’s me old top hat. But wait!” He waved his wand with a majestic flourish of his wrist, firmly believing that he had captivated the hearts and minds of at least some of his young and impressionable audience members. “What’s this? Could it be...our old furry friend...Harry the rabbit!?”

“It was in the table,” Warlock called out boredly.

One of his little friends piped up then, “You said there was gonna be a celebrity magician. I had Penn and Teller at my party, and I had a silent disco, and I got a-”

Warlock interrupted her to tell Aziraphale, “You’re _rubbish_.”

“Excuse me, excuse me,” another little boy chimed in. “He’s right, you know. You are, actually, rubbish.”

They were all so much worse than Crowley, Aziraphale realized sadly and with growing anxiety as the little beasts cornered him with their rude comments. How could he salvage his act now, knowing all the children despised him so? For the briefest moment, though he would never dare to confess it to anyone at all in a million years, his mind revisited Crowely’s suggestion of killing the Antichrist to prevent Armageddon.

Crowley himself had stopped paying attention to the magician’s act sooner than any of the kids had. Not inherently because he wanted to be spared the embarrassment–though that was a part of it–but because he was agonizing over the approaching deadline. It was only seconds away now.

“Five, four,” he whispered to himself as his watch ticked down. “Three, two, one….” He scanned around the yard, looking for any sign.

Aziraphale couldn’t say how it happened exactly, but he was both saved and utterly humiliated as he realized one of the children hurled a projectile of food matter directly at his face. There was no time to avoid it without a miracle, which he realized sadly was out of the question just as the cupcake hit him square in the side of the head. Within seconds the entertainment-starved children leapt at the opportunity and all hell broke loose–though maybe he should’ve been glad it wasn’t the hell he had expected.

Crowley had seen the fight as it broke out and snaked his way swiftly out of the crossfire before he could be targeted. He noticed with a little smirk that Aziraphale had been much less fortunate, but had taken the brunt of the initial attack directly in the face, smearing frosting all over his hair and the lapels of his finest black coat. Not that he really used his black coat for anything besides magic acts (it had been lying in storage in his bookshop for decades until that very morning), but Crowley would no doubt be hearing of it the entire ride home.

The angel felt as though he had barely escaped with his life once he had emerged into the open air beside Crowley’s Bentley. “It was all a bit of a disaster, I’m afraid.”

“Nonsense, you gave them all a party to remember,” Crowley commented cheekily as he opened his door and fell into the car, though he wasn’t really feeling any humour in it anymore as he felt the cold grip of fear wrapping around his heart. He added darkly, “Last one any of them will have, mind.”

Aziraphale dug a limp dove out of his pocket. “It’s late.”

“Comes of putting it up your sleeve,” Crowley explained obviously as he switched on the radio and his nerves started to get to him.

The angel briefly tapped the dead bird on the chest, then breathed the breath of life back into the poor creature and released it into the sky, easy as that. “No, the Hell Hound. It’s late.”

Crowley was paying more attention to the radio, waiting for a reply. “...Isle of Skye, and your time starts–HELLO CROWLEY.”

“Uh, hi. Who’s this?”

“DAGON, LORD OF THE FILES,” the radio announcer’s voice explained. “MASTER OF TORMENTS.”

“Yeah, just checking in about the Hell Hound,” Crowley mentioned cautiously.

“HE SHOULD BE WITH YOU BY NOW,” the radio said. In an almost accusatory tone it added, “WHY? HAS SOMETHING GONE WRONG, CROWLEY?”

“Wrong? No, no, nothing’s wrong. What could be wrong?” Crowley blathered unconvincingly, not that any other demon would have known him well enough to pick up on his obvious worry. “Oh, no, I see him now, yes! What a lovely, big, helly Hell Hound. Yes, okay, great talking to you.”

He frantically turned the radio off and slumped back in his seat as the icy hand around his heart started to squeeze ruthlessly with vice-like pressure–as if it wanted to turn him into demon jelly. That would probably be much more preferable to whatever fate awaited him if Hell found out he had made such a grave mistake.

“No dog,” Aziraphale said, processing the information at about the same time that Crowley was.

“No dog.”

“Wrong boy.”

“Wrong boy,” Crowley admitted past the lump in his throat, turning to look at the angel in the hope that...well, he had no hope, but he wanted to look at him nonetheless.

Aziraphale went above and beyond his expectations when he suggested, “Perhaps this is something best discussed over drinks?”

“Good idea,” Crowley breathed tiredly as he floored it out of the drive.

~

Several drinks in and Crowley wasn’t enjoying himself nearly as much as he’d hoped. Try as he might to make things feel normal again tucked away in the back room of Aziraphale’s bookshop, all he could think about was that the end of everything decent he had ever known was quickly coming to a rather abrupt close and there was nothing they could do about it.

“Armageddon is days away, and we’ve lost the Antichrist,” he said gloomily, hanging his head in his hand. “Why did the powers of Hell have to drag me into this, anyway?”

Ever the voice of reason, Aziraphale poured another glass for each of them and said as he sat down, “Well, don’t quote me on this, but I’m pretty sure it’s because of all those memos you kept sending them, saying how _amazingly_ well you were doing.”

“Is it my fault they never check up?” Crowley said, throwing his arm up in exasperation. He gratefully accepted a newly filled glass from the angel as he continued, “I’m to blame they never check up? Everyone stretches the truth a bit in memos to head office. You know that.”

“Yes, but you told them you _invented_ the Spanish Inquisition, and started the Second World War,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley frowned. “So the humans beat me to it. That’s not my fault.”

He stopped suddenly as he felt a change in the air. He could smell it...sort of. It was more like a supernatural sixth sense, really, but it seemed like he could smell it in a way. He sniffed the air, trying to get a better feel for what he had sensed. Whatever it was smelled...powerful. That was the only way he could think to describe it.

“Something’s changed,” he said finally with a note of fear in his voice.

Once again Aziraphale didn’t quite understand. “Oh, it’s a new cologne. My barber suggested-”

“Ngh, no not you, I know what you smell like,” Crowley snapped, thinking it utterly ridiculous that the angel would assume he hadn’t already picked up on that change a week ago, or that he knew exactly what he smelled like underneath all that. After several millennia, you tend to know a lot about a person, or a fellow supernatural being who resembles one, rather.

There was a long pause as Crowley’s eyes widened in realization. He knew exactly what he had sensed, and his entire body grew cold at the thought.

Gravely, he explained, “The Hell Hound has found its master.”

“Are you sure?” Aziraphale asked seriously, setting down his glass as nervousness seized him.

“I felt it,” Crowley said. “Would I lie to you?”

“Well, obviously. You’re a demon, that’s what you do.”

If he hadn’t been upset over the world coming to an end and all, Crowley might have been a little hurt by that comment, weirdly enough. Instead he brushed it off and said realistically, “No, I’m not lying. The boy, wherever he is, has the dog. He’s named it. It’s done.”

He had a sort of resigned look on his face when the words came out of his mouth, as the inevitability of it all came crashing down around him.

“He’s coming into his power,” Crowley said softly as he leaned forward over the table, trying to get Aziraphale to understand the gravity of the situation with him, trying to gauge his reaction, trying to...to what? Get some sort of comfort, he supposed, in his celestial companion. “We’re doomed.”

“Well then,” Aziraphale said, clearly just as upset over the news, “welcome to the end times.”

He raised his glass to his lips and closed his eyes. Crowley realized that was about all the comfort he was going to get, but at least he still had alcohol. He raised his glass into the air and thought of something to say.

“To the end times,” he said quietly, keeping his gaze on the table.

“To the end times,” Aziraphale responded as he tapped their glasses together, letting a quiet _clink_ fill the air of the bookshop.

The sound was like the fall of a gavel that sealed their fate. It felt like that small sound signified the earth’s final sentence to destruction. The earth, and whatever brittle relationship had formed between them over the years.


	10. Chapter Ten

The following day was much like any other, weirdly enough. Aziraphale could almost pretend that nothing at all was out of the ordinary in his own personalized slice of heaven on earth, where the biggest stressor in his life was trying to scare off potential customers before they tried to buy any of his precious books. Yes, it all seemed rather normal as he managed to convince a rather insistent young woman that the book in her hands was most definitely far outside her price range. He spent several hours merely agonizing over prospective buyers that he just wished would go away, and yet he welcomed this normalcy as a distraction from other, more troubling matters.

He knew this fragile peace would be ruined eventually, but that did nothing to ease his anxiety when he inevitably felt a change in the air that he recognized as being some form of supernatural being. Of course, he also knew that it wouldn’t be Crowley, since he had only just left the shop late the night before. On another note, it was rather absurd how disappointed he was to know that it wasn’t the demon, but he could chalk that up to just being afraid of speaking with Gabriel again in light of recent events.

He tried to act pleased to see them when he recognized Gabriel walking into the shop, followed by an angel he didn’t recognize but who looked very vaguely familiar. No doubt this was something important, sure to ruin this otherwise perfectly normal day with more thoughts of Armageddon and the world being turned into one of the bloodiest battlegrounds in celestial memory.

But he couldn’t risk letting Gabriel know about his traitorous thoughts.

“Can I help you?” he asked politely, hoping it sounded sufficiently unassuming to the surrounding humans.

“I would like to purchase one of your material objects,” Gabriel explained as he picked out a book at random and held it out.

“Books,” the other angel corrected.

“Books!” Gabriel amended, smiling far too much for the given circumstances to pass as normal. “Let us discuss my purchase in a private place, because I am buying...uh…”

“Pornography?” the other angel suggested.

“Pornography!” Archangel Gabriel agreed. Now they both had ridiculously large, proud smiles on their faces, as if they had come up with the most ingenious deception in human history. Maybe they had, to their limited knowledge of human history.

Aziraphale did his absolute best to act natural as he gestured further into the bookshop and said, “Gabriel, come into my back room.”

They began to follow him but the unfamiliar angel continued addressing the other customers, to Aziraphale’s horror, “We humans are extremely easily embarrassed. We must buy our pornography secretively.”

_At the very least their comments might serve to frighten off potential customers_ , Aziraphale thought to himself, trying to put a positive spin on it as he eagerly herded them into the back room.

“Human beings are so simple!” Gabriel proclaimed with a light chuckle as he set down _Mrs. Beeten’s Book of Household Management_ on the table. “And so easily fooled.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale agreed with a forced laugh of his own. “Er. Good job. You-you fooled them all.”

“You remember Sandalphon?” Gabriel asked, gesturing towards the other angel.

Yes, that name did ring a bell now that he mentioned it. “Uh...Sodom and Gomorrah. You were doing a lot of smiting...and turning people into salt. Hard to forget.”

It had been a rather mortifying experience for Aziraphale, from what he recalled. Obviously they were fairly terrible cities and all but...well, there were some fairly impressive restaurants for the time period that Aziraphale had grown rather fond of. It had also been a time when he had run into Crowley on a few memorable occasions and he seemed to recall learning quite a bit about the demon at that time. He vaguely wondered if he remembered one of them bringing it up during their drinking last night, as a matter of fact.

As if on cue he noticed Sandalphon sniffing the air suspiciously, just before he commented, “Something smells...evil.”

Aziraphale was gripped by panic for the briefest moment. There was no doubt in his mind that he was smelling Crowley all over the back room of the bookshop. Maybe he, too, had grown accustomed to his scent over the years. He suddenly felt a little guilty about finding it so unusual that Crowley made it sound obvious that he recognized his scent.

But no time to dwell on that now. Luckily he had an excuse pop into his head just in time, “Oh, that’ll be the Jeffrey Archer books, I’m afraid.”

He was glad to see the archangel shrug in response, readily accepting that answer. “Well, we just wanted to stop by and check on the status of the Antichrist.”

The fear returned as Aziraphale spluttered, “Why? What’s wrong? I-I mean, if there is something wrong I could put my people onto it.” He was sure that he would be making little to no sense to anyone, but if the angels picked up on his nervousness they made no comment.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Gabriel assured. “Everything’s going perfectly. There’s a lot happening. All good.”

“All good?” Aziraphale repeated. He had a sneaking suspicion he and the other angels had a very different definition of good in this case, but he did so hope that he meant good when he said it.

Gabriel quickly explained, “Well, all going according to the Divine Plan. The Hell Hound has been set loose, and now the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are being summoned. Death, Pollution, Famine, War.”

“Right,” Aziraphale said awkwardly, once it was confirmed for him that his superior’s definition of good was most definitely not the one he had hoped for, but both angels seemed positively elated. “Who exactly summons them?”

Gabriel made a face and said, “Pff...not my department. I believe we outsource that sort of thing.”

“About time, that’s what I say,” the other angel, Sandalphon, pitched in. “You can’t have a war without War.”

Aziraphale’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion, just as he heard Gabriel from behind him say in an impressed tone, “Sandalphon, that is very good. You can’t have a war...without War? I might use that, huh?”

Aziraphale didn’t see any alternative, so he smiled with them as if he could agree that it was some ground-breaking joke that rivaled any he had ever heard. It was a bitter reminder of how...bland things seemed in Heaven compared to how they were on earth. At least he had renewed motivation for putting a stop to this whole Armageddon business to the best of his ability.

“Anyway, no problems?” Gabriel asked. “Oh! How was the Hell Hound?”

“I-I-I didn’t stick around to see,” Aziraphale lied easily. Perhaps too easily, his loyal angelic side thought bitterly.

“Thank you for my pornography!” Gabriel shouted into the main area of the bookshop before Aziraphale knew what he was doing, before he even had a chance to stop him. There was nothing he could do now but smile and go along with whatever the archangel said.

“Excellent job,” Gabriel said, reassuring Aziraphale just the slightest bit. Then he turned to Sandalphon and poked him in the chest, saying, “You can’t have a war without War. Clever.”

Sandalphon chuckled with what looked almost like pride to Aziraphale, but no, angels were supposed to be immune to such sinful human vanities. Then again, he couldn’t help thinking about how his priorities seemed very different from the ideals of Heaven, at least in this day and age. Crowley’s words echoed in his head on an endless loop, reminding him over and over of everything he would be losing if the world came to an end. Well, he certainly felt that Crowley was right in trying to save the world. But how? It was troubling to think that he could be taking the side of a demon over Heaven. No, surely Heaven understood as well that saving the earth was part of the greater good.

But he was forced to put these thoughts aside as the two other angels left and he was promptly approached by another all-too-eager customer who had the audacity to assume that they had a right to ask if they could purchase a book from his collection.

~

Crowley strode through his flat with a heaven of a lot more on his mind than his celestial counterpart faced, though that was probably only because he was more willing to face his feelings and let them tear him up. It didn’t help that he didn’t have a distraction readily available. Meanwhile, as he knew, Aziraphale was only just starting to realize that he didn’t belong with the heavenly host.

The demon, on the other hand, had long been aware that he didn’t fit in with other demons, and that he felt no loyalty toward Hell. Some obedience was required, of course, and beyond that a demon wasn’t really expected to have _loyalty_ per se. But if they knew just how Crowley felt about his supposed allegiance there would certainly be some problems. Any sort of belonging he felt with Hell–as far as one can feel belonging in Hell–had decayed from his being a few thousand years ago, along with any of his genuine evildoing desire.

All he’d had to do for so long was keep up appearances as he lived his life. Now, he was faced with the end of it all, either with him spending the rest of eternity with other demons or whatever horrible unknown awaited a demon in death. Truthfully, he couldn’t decide which sounded worse.

And then there was Aziraphale. That damn angel was going to be the death of him. Crowley still had no idea what he wanted them to be. Whatever they were, he knew that Aziraphale made up some of the highlights of his time on earth, but there was hardly space for both of them in the post-apocalyptic universe. But, infuriatingly, Aziraphale denied that there was anything between them. But Crowley knew. There were signs.

There were always moments: the briefest glimmer of acknowledgement when Aziraphale seemed to forget their differences and let how he truly felt show. Crowley was assured, if only for a short time, that there was something between them. He had foolishly convinced himself that they weren’t imagined, and yet they were so subtle that at times he began to doubt and he couldn’t be sure if he was reading too much into it.

The worst thing was that there was hardly anything he could do about it now. If he tried to bring it up again it was more than likely that the angel would refuse to speak to him until the end of time. Which, in all likelihood, was only a few short days away. He wasn’t sure he could live his last few days on earth with the one entity who actually mattered being mad at him.

Speaking of which, he was quite certain that he didn’t want to spend his last days _thinking_ about spending time with the aforementioned entity. He picked his phone up off the receiver and was about to dial Aziraphale’s bookshop...then grimaced as he decided against it and put the phone back down. He was probably busy running around the bookshop trying to evade customers anyway, and they had only just left each other’s company less than half a day ago. With a scowl he snapped his fingers to turn on the T.V. and flopped back into his throne-like desk chair heavily.

He lost interest within seconds as the show’s hostess babbled on about international tensions and whatnot. That only served to remind him of exactly what he was trying to forget. He grimaced again as he heard a brief moment of static and was fairly sure he knew what that meant.

“Morning, Crowley,” a familiar voice said, confirming his suspicions. “Just checking in. Nice chair.”

“Hey guys,” he said conversationally, as if it wasn’t two demons reaching out to him from the depths of Hell to discuss the end of the world.

"It’s about the Antichrist,” Ligur said, as if that wasn’t obvious.

Crowley wasn’t in the mood, to say the least. “Yeah. Great kid. Takes after his dad.”

Hastur ignored his little quip as he explained, “Our operatives in the State Department have arranged for the child’s family to be flown to the Middle East.”

Ligur continued for him, “There, he and the Hell Hound will be taken to the valley of Megiddo.”

“The Four Horsemen will begin their final ride,” Hastur said.

“Yay,” Crowley cheered halfheartedly, pumping his fist into the air before letting it slump back down over the arm of the chair.

“Armageddon will begin. The final combat. It’s what we’ve been working towards since we rebelled,” Hastur said. “We are the fallen. Never forget that.”

“Well it’s not the sort of thing you forget,” Crowley responded.

Hastur glared at him as he murmured in a voice cold enough to freeze Hell itself, “I don’t trust you, Crowley.”

“Everything’s going just fine,” Crowley retorted.

With a snap of his fingers the T.V. switched off and he was left to his own devices once again. Back to the crushing reality he had tried so desperately to avoid.

To himself he muttered mournfully, “I didn’t mean to fall...I just hung around the wrong people.”

There was only deafening silence to answer him.

“Easy job,” he grumbled angrily. “Deliver the Antichrist. Keep an eye on him. Nice, straightforward job, eh? Not the kind of thing any demon is going to screw up, right?”

With that he blessed under his breath and leapt out of his seat. He had one destination in mind, one sure-fire way to rid himself of the stress and pretend he had control over _something_ in his life. They had been looking a bit too relaxed lately anyway, and he had a responsibility to keep them in check.

He strode leisurely but purposefully over to the verdant collection of plants and snatched up his trusty water squirter, spritzing the plants as he surveyed them critically. He was disgusted at how quickly he found an imperfection in the foliage, mere moments after he had begun to water them. He almost pitied the poor newer plant, who just maybe hadn’t quite learned how serious he was about having the perfect plants.

Almost.

“Is that a spot?” he asked. “ _Is it_?”

The leaves started to quiver a bit around him. The older plants had been around long enough to understand what would happen next. They knew damn well what would happen, and knew just as well that it could happen to any one of them next if they let down their guard. But he had to be sure.

“Right, you _know_ what I’ve told you all about leaf spots,” Crowley said flatly, like the brief moment of calm before the ferocious storm that was to come. His voice began to rise as he continued, “I will not _stand_ for them!”

He picked up the little potted plant forcefully, likening it to prying a newborn babe from its mother’s breast as he had seen some cruel figures do throughout history. He gave the small plant a scathing look as the plants around them began to shudder with more intensity. _Good_ , he thought cruelly. _Can’t let them get too comfortable_.

“You know what you’ve done,” he told the little plant. “You’ve disappointed me.” He tutted and shook his head sadly, muttering, “Oh dear, oh dear.”

Then he held the weakest link aloft for all to see and called out to all the other plants to make a spectacle of the little failure in their midst, “Everyone! Say goodbye to your friend. He just couldn’t cut it.”

Then he turned toward the hallway. It was the hallway every plant in Europe envisioned in their worst nightmares. The hallway that Granny plants told their little ones about to teach them a lesson about behaving. Well, at least it would have been if plants really were personified like that outside of Crowley’s overactive imagination.

To the little plant in his hand he hissed, “Now, this is going to hurt you _SO_ much more than it will hurt me.” Turning to the rest of the plants for a final time he roared, “And you guys... _GROW BETTER_!”

The demon let his piercing amber gaze fall on each plant for emphasis before turning on his heel and walking down the hallway. The little failure in his hands was shaking now as it no doubt began to realize what was happening.

Most people might try to tell you that plants can’t feel pain. Recent studies would suggest that plants are actually capable of emitting a scream-like noise when subject to harmful effects, such as being cut down or drying out. Crowley knew from personal experience that any plant that got on his bad side would have preferred to be a human subject to all manner of medieval torture methods before facing whatever it was that he did to them.


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale and Crowley have little in the way of leads, but they do what they can to begin tracking down the Antichrist.

“ _The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter_?” Aziraphale asked, almost wistfully. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”

The gentleman on the other end of the line scoffed. “Surely you know of Agnes Nutter?”

Aziraphale gave his own answering scoff as he replied, “Well, of course I know who she was. Born 1600, exploded 1656. But there are no copies of her book available.”

Oh, if only he had it. He would certainly ensure that such a book never found its way into human hands again, let alone such a greedy fiend as this. No, Agnes Nutter’s work had become something of an obsession for the angel once he had realized it was the only piece missing from his fantastic collection of prophetic books. Not only that, but if legends were true, it was the only prophetic book that contained entirely precise predictions. It would truly be the crowning jewel of his entire book collection. But alas: centuries of searching had led him only to dead ends and disappointment. If there ever was a copy out there that had survived the ages, it was a closely-guarded secret.

Meanwhile, the hopeful and also rather rude customer was blathering something about price being no object and all that Aziraphale had heard a thousand times before. _Certainly such an impressive book is worth much more than mere money_ , he thought with disgust as the optimistic customer prattled on.

“No, I can’t name my price, I don’t have it,” Aziraphale insisted in the most polite voice that he could muster. “Nobody has-”

He stopped mid-sentence and gulped hard as he heard a stream of most unfavorable curses cross the phone line.

“Well, there really is no need for that kind of language.”

With that, he hung up the phone with a rather unpleasant feeling settling in his gut. At least he had other, more pressing matters to trouble himself over. Actually, that reminded him of why he had initially wanted to use the phone in the first place, before he was most rudely interrupted. He carefully put in the numbers and waited as the phone rang several times.

“Hey, this is Anthony Crowley. You know what to do, do it with style.”

How silly of him to answer his calls the same way almost every time. Aziraphale ignored it and went ahead with what he needed to say: “No leads yet on my end. Anything at your end? Listen, I have a sort of an idea.”

“What?” A brusque voice asked from the other end.

“Ah, hullo. When you did the baby swap 11 years ago, could something have gone wrong?”

“What?” the voice asked again. This time, at least, it sounded more intrigued than angry.

Aziraphale continued, “Well, it may just be a lead of sorts, if we can use this information to find a starting point. The beginning, if we must.”

Crowley thought it over for a moment. Retracing his steps tended to work better for ordinary misplaced household items and he had never thought to try the tactic on demonic children. Then again, it could very well be the only lead they were likely to get. And, truth be told, he was eager for a chance to see his friend again.

“Ah, right. I’ll be over in a moment.”

Aziraphale nodded out of habit, forgetting for the time that Crowley couldn’t recognize the movement on the other end. “Right, yes. See you then.”

It seemed that all too soon he was back in his usual place in the passenger seat of Crowley’s Bentley. Hell on earth seemed a suitable nickname for the seat, in Aziraphale’s eyes. He tried to focus on that, or anything really to distract himself as they barreled down the streets of London at a ridiculous pace. He personally had never been fond of horses as transportation in the past, but the invention of automobiles was a terribly grave mistake on the part of humanity. But, sooner or later he had to come back to reality and focus on the task at hand.

“You’ve lost the boy-”

“ _We’ve lost him_ ,” Crowley corrected.

Aziraphale could hardly see how it mattered or how he could be blamed for it, but he wasn’t about to argue when a simple twist of the demon’s arm could have him rather inconveniently returned to Heaven in a few short seconds.

“A child has been lost,” Aziraphale amended, still stubbornly refusing to accept that he had any responsibility in it. “But, you still know his age-”

“We know,” Crowley insisted.

“-His birthday. He’s 11.”

“You make it sound so easy,” Crowley said glumly.

The angel answered much more optimistically, “Well, it can’t be that hard.” A little more worriedly, he added, “I just hope nothing’s happened to him.”

“Happened?” Crowley said. “Nothing’s happened to him. He happens to everything!”

Aziraphale felt a rather marked increase in his heart rate as the car seemed to react to Crowley’s mounting frustration, or maybe something else. It was hard to gauge his emotions at times, but whatever it was was very unpleasant when he was behind the wheel of a dangerous piece of machinery.

“So, we only have to, ah, find his birth records, go through the, uh, hospital files,” Aziraphale explained rationally, desperately trying to distract himself from the images flashing past them at what seemed like impossible speeds.

“And then what?” Crowley asked flatly.

“And then we find the child,” Aziraphale assured simply.

“And _then_ what!?” Crowley reiterated. His voice was rising unpleasantly again.

The angel paused, unsure. Then he cried, “Watch out for that pedestrian!”

“She’s on the street; she knows the risk she’s taking,” Crowley dismissed. Truthfully, he was an excellent driver; he had seen her coming from a mile away and had skillfully dodged her. He never would have let anything happen to her. He looked over to the angel to see if he had anything else to say on the matter, or if he would answer his earlier question.

“Just watch the- watch the road!” Aziraphale said in a panic. “Wh-where is this hospital, anyway?”

“A village near Oxford: Tadfield,” Crowley explained, much too calmly for Aziraphale’s taste, considering the reckless abandon with which he drove.

“Crowley, you can’t do 90 miles per hour in central London!”

“Why not?” the demon asked as he took his hands off the steering wheel to shrug, the bastard.

“You’ll get us killed!” Aziraphale cried. “Well, inconveniently discorporated. Music. Why don’t I put on...a little...music?”

He reached for a collection of CDs and eagerly dug out a few of the titles. He rather hoped there would be something a little more suitable to his own tastes that would allow him to think fondly of memories of his bookshop...which at this rate, he just might not get to see again before he died.

“What’s a Velvet Underground?” he asked as he glanced through the titles.

“You wouldn’t like it.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said in understanding, knowing precisely what he meant. “Bebop.”

But he couldn’t dwell on that now as a sharp turn had him completely immobilized in fear. The ride was like this for most of the journey, at least as long as it lasted through the city. Aziraphale was vaguely aware of his companion saying something now and again, but he was entirely sure that if he allowed himself enough conscious thought to understand the words he might very well end up trying one of those “heart attack” things he had heard so much about.

Luckily, in time, the crowded streets of the city eventually gave way to countryside and lush, green forests. Top it all off with a mostly open, empty highway, and the angel was noticeably more comfortable with their speed. Crowley had apparently given up on trying to start a conversation, though.

After a time, Aziraphale asked, “This is the Tadfield area. Does it look familiar yet?”

“You know, it does,” Crowley said with a concentrated look on his face. “I think there’s an airbase around here somewhere.”

“Airbase?” Now that was intriguing.

The demon explained, “Well, you don’t think American diplomats’ wives usually give birth in little religious hospitals in the middle of nowhere, do you?” At the angel’s look he went on, “No, it all had to seem to happen naturally. So there’s an airbase at Lower Tadfield. Things started to happen...base hospital isn’t ready. ‘Oh,’ our man there said, ‘there’s a birthing hospital just down the road.’ And there we were. Rather good organisation.”

“Flawless,” Aziraphale commented dryly.

“It should have worked,” Crowley said with a hint of bitterness in his tone.

Aziraphale remarked, “Ah, but evil always contains the seeds of its own destruction. No matter how well-planned, how foolproof an evil plan, no matter how apparently successful it may seem upon the way...in the end it will founder on the rocks of iniquity...and vanish.”

_Righteous_ bastard, Crowley thought. But after such a holy and glorious speech he knew exactly what to say to get under the angel’s skin. He knew how to make a mockery of his poetic moral lecture with a short and sweet explanation of what had really caused the downfall of Hell’s plan.

“For my money it was just an ordinary cock-up.”

He did so enjoy watching Aziraphale make a face at him out of the corner of his eye. Before much more could be said on the matter, though, he realized that they were getting closer than he originally thought. He mentioned it to Aziraphale, and sure enough within minutes they were pulling up to what certainly looked like just the same spot from 11 years ago. Crowley pulled up beside the property and put the Bentley in park, switching off the ignition with a snap of his fingers.

Aziraphale wordlessly followed suit as Crowley stepped out and began walking up to the gate. The angel politely took the path while the demon walked straight up to the front, scanning all the windows of the building as he did. It looked very different, to be sure: it looked severely remodeled considering it had only been a little over a decade. Still, he was certain this was the place.

“Um, are you sure this is the right place?” Aziraphale asked with a tinge of nervousness in his tone. “This-this doesn’t look like a hospital...and,” he put a hand on the demon’s arm and Crowley stopped at once, turning to look at him. The angel suddenly seemed much too pleasant, even chuckling as he finished, “Why...it feels loved.”

Crowley frowned. “No, it’s definitely the place.” His mouth worked uselessly for a moment before he found the words to ask, “What do you mean, ‘loved’?”

“Well, I mean the opposite of when you say, ‘I don’t like this place, it feels spooky’.”

“I don’t ever say that,” Crowley dismissed a bit awkwardly. “I like spooky. Big spooky fan, me. Let’s go talk to some nuns.”

He led the way onto the property and through the gateway, desperate to leave that whole “love” business behind. A split second later he heard a gunshot, and felt a piercing pain in his chest. The force of it sent him reeling backwards and he let out a winded gasp of shock. So this is how his corporation would finally be terminated, after 6,000 years of bad, dishonest demon work.

He put a hand on his profusely bleeding chest and, to his surprise, found only solid human flesh beneath his fingers, albeit colored red so that at first glance it looked like blood. He pulled his hand away and inspected the liquid to find that it wasn’t blood at all.

“Blue?” Aziraphale asked as he looked over his shoulder at the blue splotch on his coat.

“Oh, it’s paint,” Crowley pointed out in surprise.

They both turned to look as a human came toward them with a displeased look on his face. “Hey! You’ve been hit! I don’t know what you think you’re playing at right-”

Crowley interrupted him by transforming himself into a horrific beast for the briefest moment, one with pale skin and bug-eyes and flesh crawling with maggots and disease. With that, the human fell instantly unconscious from fright and toppled right to the ground. Crowley went back to normal as if nothing had happened.

“Well that was fun,” the demon commented cheerily as he surveyed the fallen mortal.

Aziraphale was much less pleased with the result, but not altogether surprised. “Well, yes, fun for you. I do hope you didn’t go just a bit too far...and just _look_ at the state of this coat!” Crowley turned his attention to the angel instead, stepping around him to get a better look as he rambled on, distraught, “I’ve kept this in tip-top condition for over 180 years now. I’ll never get this stain out.”

He sounded just as ridiculous as usual. Truth be told, Crowley begrudgingly started to like that side of him. “You could just miracle it away.”

“Hmm…” was all Aziraphale said at first, frowning at the idea. “Yes, but...well, I would always know the stain was there. Underneath, I mean.”

Crowley pouted at him, partially mocking him, though he realized there was no use to his mockery when the angel was clearly far more concerned with the ‘state of his coat’, as he put it. Without a second thought Crowley leaned in close and gently blew a warm breath over Aziraphale’s shoulder. He watched in satisfaction as the blue ink drifted away and dissipated into the dying light.

Aziraphale was taken aback by his gesture. “Oh, thank you.”

He gave Crowley a genuine smile, while at the same time a tiny voice in his head tried to get his attention about something. Something in the way Crowley had looked at him, maybe, or the way his breath had felt billowing past his cheek to work its demonic magic on the stain in his coat. Before he knew it he was positively grinning at the demon. But they had work to do and he couldn’t afford to listen to some little voice planting senseless, traitorous thoughts in his head. He choked back the smile and moved to inspect the gun that had fallen from the human’s grasp when he fell.

Crowley felt an odd sensation at Aziraphale’s surprisingly soft smile. It was so...real, and unexpectedly warm. It took a second for him to snap out of it when he realized Aziraphale was talking.

“...this gun. It’s not a proper one at all. It just shoots paintballs,” Aziraphale was saying.

Right, they had a reason for being there in that moment. Crowley grabbed the gun from him and asked, “Don’t your lot disapprove of guns?” He pointed the paintball gun teasingly at Aziraphale’s chest, but the angel batted it away without comment.

“Unless they’re in the right hands. Then they give weight to a moral argument...I think.”

Crowley grinned at that. Was there no end to this angel’s sweet, naive sense of righteousness? “A moral argument? Really?” He tossed the gun aside so that it clattered unceremoniously to the dirt, then sauntered further into the compound with a broad smile on his face. “Come on.”

His grin gradually faded as they entered the vaguely familiar building, and something about it reminded him of their purpose. They had to find the Antichrist, and to do that they had to be serious. At least, somewhat serious.

“This is definitely the place,” Crowley assured as he peered around the hospital looking for clues. “Wonder where the nuns went.”

It was certainly puzzling. He picked up a brochure and briefly flipped through it, feeling a little disappointed but not altogether surprised that it didn’t say anything along the lines of, “Until 11 years ago, the manor was used as a hospital by an order of Satanic nuns who weren’t actually very good at it.”

All the while, Aziraphale silently followed by his side. Something about this felt rather natural, as far as exploring a former cult location could feel natural. At least, he felt strangely comfortable with the angel by his side in this place. And indeed, Aziraphale enjoyed his presence equally in turn, as long as their companionship didn’t directly inconvenience his allegiance to Heaven.

The pleasant investigative stroll was rudely interrupted as a human darted past them, calling out in frustration, “Oh, Millie from Accounts caught me on the elbow! Who’s winning?”

“You’re all going to lose,” Crowley answered perilously with a snap of his fingers.

Aziraphale looked startled. “What-what the _hell_ did you just do?”

“Well, they wanted real guns,” Crowley disclosed with a shit-eating grin on his face, “so I gave them what they wanted.”

He carried on down the hall, leaving the angel to scramble worriedly after him. After Aziraphale had processed the information he said in shock, “There are people out there shooting at each other.”

Crowley shrugged. “Well, it lends weight to their moral argument.” He kicked down a door, but when he saw that the room’s only occupant was a now shattered glass something he carried on walking and elaborated, “Everyone has free will, including the right to murder. Just think of it as a microcosm of the universe.”

“They’re _murdering_ each other!?”

“No, they aren’t,” Crowley said with a disappointed sigh. “No one’s killing anyone. They’re all having miraculous escapes. It wouldn’t be any fun otherwise.”

He added that last bit just a little bit desperately, hoping against all odds that it would help his case so that he didn’t sound too soft. A demon could get in a lot of trouble for being soft, even if he just didn’t feel like being responsible for the deaths of dozens of innocent human lives. At least, not today.

Aziraphale noticeably cheered up at that, to the demon’s horror. “You know, Crowley, I’ve always said that deep down, you really are quite a nice-”

It was Crowley’s responsibility as a demon to stop right there. He hissed as he grabbed the lapels of Aziraphale’s coat and threw him roughly against the wall. That, however, would turn out to be a very short-sighted plan. All at once he found himself unbearably close to the angel. He felt Aziraphale’s hot breath on his face as the wind was knocked out of him, could feel the touch of their chests as Crowley gasped out an angry breath. Good _Hells_ , he could feel their hips connect for the briefest moment, and something short-circuited in Crowley’s brain.

His mind went completely on autopilot as he hissed in the angel’s face, “ _Shut it_! I’m a demon, I’m not nice! I’m never nice. Nice is a four-letter word. I will not have-”

He was interrupted abruptly by the absolute last thing he would have expected. He couldn’t say how it happened, but Aziraphale’s lips were on his, effectively silencing him.


	12. Chapter Twelve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale, for whatever reason, kissed Crowley out of the blue.  
> Neither of them are particularly ready for it.

Crowley’s heart pounded in his chest as his already slow brain desperately scrambled to catch up with what was happening. Aziraphale’s eyes were closed, because at least he had a chance to anticipate that he was going to kiss him. Crowley just stood there dumbly, unsure how to react to the sudden connection. His mind was working a mile a minute to process everything.

Aziraphale was...warm. And soft. Unbelievably soft. He had absolutely no idea why this was happening, but he was firmly convinced that this was everything he had wanted from the angel and more. He was...kissing him. That was a good sign, right? In all the time that his brain stumbled over the information he realized too late that he hadn’t actually responded to the touch at all and stood there dumbly, staring blankly at Aziraphale’s eyelids. It occurred to him that he should respond somehow, but his entire body stood still as a piece of petrified wood against most of the voices in his head begging him to _do_ something.

But before long, it was too late.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” a distant voice called. And just like that the warmth was gone as Aziraphale broke off the kiss and drew back. “Sorry to break up an intimate moment. Can I help you?”

Crowley’s head whipped around to face the intruder, just a moment too quickly to catch the look of pain on Aziraphale’s face from what he had interpreted as rejection. Crowley’s head was reeling. He couldn’t be entirely sure he was still standing at this point.

Something clicked in his mind when he saw the woman, and his struggling psyche latched onto the faintest trace of coherent thought to steady him. Every one of his thoughts were suddenly focused on determining where he recognized her from, with only the smallest trace in his mind still trying to draw attention to the possibility that Aziraphale had, in fact, just kissed him. Most of him agreed that it was much easier to focus on the strange lady. Every trace of Aziraphale left his mind when it snapped into place: this was the very nun he had handed off the Antichrist to all those years ago.

His rational side took over before he could stop it. “You.”

“Saints and demons preserve us, it’s Master Crowley,” the woman squeaked.

Crowley snapped his fingers and the woman froze, all traces of fear evaporating from her face in a split second.

“You didn’t have to do that. You could have just asked her,” Aziraphale said, stuffing down the traces of embarrassment before the demon could possibly pick up on them.

But Crowley glared at him a moment, not seeing any sign that he even remembered the kiss. Had he seriously somehow imagined the whole thing? And here the angel acted like it was nothing. Luckily the autopiloting rational part of him was still kicking into gear and took over the complicated thoughts without his consent.

“Oh...of course, of course. No, yeah. ‘Scuse me, ma’am, we’re two supernatural entities just looking for the notorious Son of Satan. Wonder if you might help us with our _enquiries_?”

He turned away after he finished, and Aziraphale let the disappointment show on his face so that he had an outlet for a moment. Was it really that easy for Crowley to pretend that they hadn’t kissed? Or, no, Aziraphale had kissed _him_ , and not so much the other way around. Maybe he should just be glad that the demon was letting the encounter go without another word on the matter.

Still, Aziraphale would be rather torn up about the whole experience for a good long while. How foolish of him to read Crowley so poorly to assume that he would be compliant with such a crass gesture. And good heavens, what drove him to do it in the first place? In any case, he supposed he should be grateful for the distraction the young woman had most generously provided for his blunder.

“Uh...ahem. Look...hello,” Aziraphale muttered. It was hard to focus when Crowley was leaning in surprisingly close behind him so that their shoulders brushed. “You weren’t by any chance a nun here at this convent 11 years ago, were you?”

“I was,” the woman answered with a vacant expression on her face.

Aziraphale glanced at Crowley and muttered, “Luck of the devil.” He realized how close they were again and struggled to keep a straight face. And why, oh why, did that despicable urge return at their close proximity? It was hardly a becoming impulse of an angel.

Crowley glanced at Aziraphale in return in an attempt to get a read on his expression, but he had already turned his face again. Instead, he asked of the former nun, “What happened to the baby I gave you?”

“I swapped him with the son of the American ambassador. Such a nice man. He used to be ambassador to Swindon. Then Sister Theresa Garulous came and took the other baby away.”

Crowley latched onto the hope that they would get useful information out of her yet. “This American ambassador: what was his name, where did he come from, and what did he _do_ with the baby!?”

“I don’t know,” the woman answered.

“Records,” Aziraphale blurted. “There must have been records.”

The woman raised both their spirits as she said, “Yes, there were lots of records. We were very good at keeping records.”

“Well, where are they?” Aziraphale inquired.

“Burned in the fire,” she answered.

Crowley groaned as his heart sank. “Hastur!” It had to be that short-sighted Duke of Hell, pyromaniac that he was.

The angel ignored his frustration and asked hopefully, “Well, is there anything you remember about the baby?”

“He had lovely little toesie-woesies.”

Not helpful, but it certainly served to cheer Aziraphale up a bit, as he gave her a soft smile.

“Let’s go,” Crowley said with annoyance.

Aziraphale took a moment to address the woman in a soft and soothing voice, “You will wake, having had a lovely dream about whatever you like best.”

“Oi,” Crowley called.

The angel snapped his fingers before promptly following the demon outside. A number of officers milled about them collecting paintball guns miraculously loaded with live rounds and interrogating or arresting a number of other people on the grounds. The angel and demon passed by, completely uncontested by the authorities.

“You’d think he’d show up,” Aziraphale commented. “Wouldn’t you? You’d think we could detect him in some way.”

“He won’t show up, not to us, protective camouflage,” Crowley explained. “He won’t even know it, but his powers will keep him hidden from prying occult forces.”

“Occult forces?”

“You and me,” Crowley said, as if it were obvious.

Aziraphale frowned at that and uttered huffily, “I’m not occult.”

“Oh,” was all the demon said in response, not believing him for a second.

The angel noticed his tone and took offense. “Angels aren’t occult! We’re ethereal!”

Crowley couldn’t help smirking just a little bit at that as he led the way back to the car. They both climbed in, and a second later they were tearing off down the road, to Aziraphale’s despair. By habit, Crowley clicked on the radio and Queen started playing, as he probably should have expected. When they came back out on the main road he pressed harder on the gas pedal, completely ignoring Aziraphale’s look of terror. “These Are the Days of Our Lives” began to play.

“Is there some other way of locating him?” Aziraphale asked.

“How the heaven should I know?” Crowley grumbled in exasperation. If he had any ideas at all he would have voiced them by now. His lack of ideas was the whole reason he had agreed to go scampering about on some wild goose chase through Tadfield with Aziraphale. Well, that and he was more than willing to pounce on the opportunity to spend more time with the angel before the whole global destruction thing.

But back on topic. Crowley added, “Armageddon only happens once, you know. You don’t get to go round again until you get it right.”

He picked up speed again and veered around an approaching car, scaring Aziraphale half to death so that he clung to whatever he could reach in his panic. Crowley paid him and the other driver no mind, even as the other driver laid on their horn and his ears filled with the sound of tires screeching.

“But I know one thing,” Crowley continued, “If we don’t find him, it won’t be the war to end all wars. It’ll be the war to end everything.”

They rode on in relative silence for a while, each thinking about a number of things that had crossed their respective minds throughout the day. Oddly enough, the Antichrist was not the primary focus of either of them. In truth, it was all a number of recurring thoughts that revolved around the kiss.

Aziraphale resorted to berating himself incessantly, at least after he got over the initial fear of being the passenger in Crowley’s car again. He was most certain the kiss was a mistake. He was an angel, for Heaven’s sake! He couldn’t have... _romantic_ feelings for anyone, much less a demon. No, he had been reading too much romance of late, maybe. All that was sure to muddle the thoughts. Or, better yet, it was that recurring feeling of love and adoration that echoed through the whole Tadfield area that he couldn’t put his finger on. It wasn’t a romantic love he felt in the air, but surely that was what had influenced him nonetheless.

But the way Crowley had reacted, or rather _hadn’t_ reacted...pretended it hadn’t happened...oh, how could he have misread things so much? Was Crowley mad at him now? Was that why he was so silent, scowling through his glasses at the road ahead as he almost mindlessly skipped through every Queen song that had a romantic temperament as soon as he recognized the first notes?

No doubt he thought he was avoiding an awkward situation when he did so, but surely he knew that Aziraphale had been in the Bentley and was exposed to its songs enough to recognize many of the songs just as quickly. Each and every time the demon skipped one it weighed on him more and more.

Finally, he decided he had no choice but to address it after all. Albeit in his own, roundabout way.

“There’s a very peculiar feeling to this whole area. I’m astonished you can’t feel it.”

“I don’t feel anything out of the ordinary,” Crowley responded simply.

Did he sound unusually short with his answer or was Aziraphale imagining things? It was terrible not knowing what the demon was thinking.

“But it’s everywhere. All over here,” Aziraphale insisted. “Love. Flashes of love.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” Crowley said sharply.

But why did his mind snap out the answer so quickly, against his will? He should have been happy that the angel felt love. No, that was just the problem: Just as Crowley could sense evil in the world, the angel could sense the good that he could not. Somehow his subconscious had already made the connection before he thought of it himself: the celestial being had been influenced by some romantic force that had nothing to do with Crowley himself. The kiss was fake. Everything Aziraphale might be feeling toward him right now had to be fake. He knew how Aziraphale responded to their relationship from before. He had seen that years ago when he had been asked to leave his bookshop after an almost love confession. Once this ridiculous feeling of “flashes of love” was gone, Aziraphale would appreciate Crowley keeping him at arm’s length.

“Let me speak,” Aziraphale whined sadly. At Crowley’s silence he said, “Well, I wanted to explain the kiss.”

Crowley tried not to give himself away with a sigh of relief when he discovered his potential escape from the conversation: an unassuming young woman pedalling frantically through the woods on her bicycle. She wouldn’t be able to see the black Bentley speeding down the road with the headlamps off in the growing darkness, but the demon easily recognized her heat signature through the trees. All he had to do was line up the shot subtly enough that Aziraphale wouldn’t suspect a thing. Just a bit slower….

He tried to appear distracted by the conversation as he grumbled, “The last thing we need right now is-”

His plan worked perfectly as he was interrupted by a heavy _thud_ , followed swiftly by a woman’s scream. He did his best to look shocked.

“You hit someone,” Aziraphale said, eyes wide in horror.

Crowley looked at him, knowing damn well that even though it was his fault, the angel had gotten the order of it all wrong. “I didn’t. Someone hit me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please let me know anything that's on your mind and feel free to offer any feedback whatsoever.


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